MPs in the House during a past session. Photo|FILE
NATION MEDIA GROUP
Six months after the Truth, Justice and
Reconciliation Commission handed in its final report, at the deadline
for establishing its implementation mechanisms, its shortcomings are
glaring.
The National Assembly, which was supposed to
ensure the report’s implementation, can no longer hide its problems
behind civility. Pressed by the expiry of various deadlines in the TJRC
report, Members of Parliament have no choice but to square up to its
embarrassing mistakes.
It has been forced to confront
the obvious shoddiness in carelessly requiring the investigation of
important members of society.
Even after the Kenyan
commissioners — acting patriotically without the influence of foreign
masters — took charge of the land chapter and omitted four odious
paragraphs from the report, there are numerous shortcomings that require
the intervention of sages in the National Assembly.
It
is odious for the report to impute that the President, Deputy
President, MPs and other leaders should be investigated for gross human
rights violations, land grabbing, torture, massacre and what-not.
Having
been popularly chosen in democratic elections, the leaders whose
reputations are being unfairly impugned are obviously beyond reproach or
suspicion. It is unconscionable to recommend further investigations —
let alone prosecutions — when these leaders have been cleared outright
at the ballot.
Asking the President to publicly
apologise for gross injustices and human rights violations committed
while he was still in his napkins would itself be a gross violation of
his human rights.
People who died to preserve the
national interest, those who lost limbs in the pursuit of national
security, and others whose bodies were sexually invaded as a
contribution to nation building cannot be the responsibility of the
President. Many of the people who are assumed to have been assassinated
were political suicides.
It would greatly demoralise
the Kenya Defence Forces, Kenya Police Service and National Intelligence
Service to be made to apologise for performing their official duties.
The requirement of an apology for extra-judicial killings, detention,
torture and sexual violence would take the glamour away from the
security services and discourage young people from joining up.
Nothing
could be achieved by the Judiciary apologising for judgments given by
judicial officers who have since died, been purged or vetted out.
A
slew of apologies without regard to the dignity of the offices that
perform functions of state would injure the national interest
irreparably. The TJRC report is the product of irresponsible posturing
by civil society on the payroll of foreign powers jealous of Kenya’s
rapid development.
There is no point in taking the
country’s owners of capital, captains of industry and local investors in
land to task for creating wealth when opportunity presented itself.
The
people who tilled the land when it was all bush, the people who rescued
money from the carelessness of public servants deserve recognition
rather than unwarranted accusations.
That is why the
National Assembly should seize the TJRC report and edit it for accuracy,
consistency and truth. It should also ensure that the final product
preserves the reputations of the innocent.
Although the
initial intent of the law establishing the TJRC was to ensure that its
report would be automatically implemented, the slipshod manner in which
it has dealt with important people’s reputations calls for revisions.
Considering
that there are many innocent people in the National Assembly who have
been unfairly mentioned in the report, the august House is the best
place to repair the damage caused and finally give Kenyans a report that
is truthful, just and conciliatory.
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