President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto at the Jomo
Kenyatta International Airport in the past. FILE PHOTO | NATION MEDIA
GROUP
Even by President Uhuru Kenyatta’s usual displays of flippancy
and bonhomie, this latest attempt at being “real” was pretty insensitive
and in poor taste.
Released video footage showed Mr
Kenyatta, a former crimes-against-humanity suspect, poking fun at
Gambian barrister Fatou Bensouda’s failed attempt to successfully charge
him at The Hague. By so doing, the President re-opened the wounds of
Kenya’s period of infamy and epitomised utter lack of sensitivity and
absolute hubris.
Mr Kenyatta’s utterances also
revisited charges first raised during the run-up to the “thanksgiving”
rally planned in Nakuru in mid-April to celebrate Ms Bensouda’s dropping
of the cases against the President and his deputy — that the two were
“dancing on the graves of the victims of Kenya’s post-election violence
of 2007/2008”.
Referring to the protests that followed
Donald J. Trump’s victory over Hillary R. Clinton in the just-concluded
US presidential election, Mr Kenyatta told the audience: “Recently, you
saw what happened in the United States. Despite the fact that there were
violent demonstrations... in fact, I was tempted to look for Fatou
Bensouda to put a case against post-election violence in the United
States...”
The gathered dignitaries, along with
President Kenyatta, went on to rollick in laughter as he made light of
an event that evokes the same emotions in Kenya as do some of the
world’s most traumatic events, including the genocide in Rwanda circa
1994.
Lost in President Kenyatta’s misplaced comparison
between the 2007/2008 post-election violence in Kenya that landed both
he and his deputy, Mr William Ruto, at The Hague and the 2016 protests
in Portland, Los Angeles, New York, and other major cities in the US
following Donald Trump’s victory was the glaring fact that approximately
1,200 Kenyans lost their lives in Kenya’s post-election violence.
Also
lost in President Kenyatta’s callous remarks was the fact that over
500,000 Kenyans were displaced in their own country. The man who once
gloated about “eating meat” even as those in the opposition “salivate”
seemed oblivious, if not outright indifferent, to the negative impact of
Kenya’s post-election violence on personal property and the Kenyan
economy.
Mr Kenyatta also conveniently overlooked the
fact that the US is not a signatory to the Rome Statute of the
International Criminal Court.
Contrastingly, there
have been no reports of deaths during more than two weeks of
demonstrations in the US. The protests have disrupted lives and resulted
in damage to property. However, that no lives have been lost in the
wake of Mr Trump’s Electoral College victory is even more impressive,
given the overwhelming advantage Ms Clinton has in the popular vote —
more than two million at last count.
Finally, lost in
Mr Kenyatta’s tasteless attempt at humour was the premise upon which his
“joke” was fashioned: The failure of the International Criminal Court
to sustain charges against him.
Alongside other
unsavoury machinations, the President and his team successfully foisted
hyperbolic and damaging charges of hypocrisy on the world court, leading
to its failure (to charge him), thus all but assuring a sad but
predictable outcome: That almost a decade later, no one has been held
accountable for the post-election violence that wreaked havoc in Kenya.
Mr
Kenyatta joked about the court’s failure to prosecute him despite the
incontrovertible evidence that lives were lost and others permanently
changed by the violence that also caused property damage worth billions.
Yes,
America is just as divided as Kenya. The two countries are divided
along ethnic/racial, economic, and class fault lines. However, the key
difference that President Kenyatta’s joke overlooked is the existence of
relatively strong and independent institutions (law enforcement,
judiciary, legislature, executive) in America.
These
institutions, as flawed and demonstrably biased as they are, have
managed the protests and disputed election outcomes with nary the level
of violence and destruction of property that Kenya witnessed in
2007/2008.
Mr Kenyatta, reportedly a student of
history, should know better. He owes Kenyans an apology. At a minimum,
he should apologise to the families and friends of those permanently
scarred by the country’s post-election violence of 2007/2008 for his
insensitive and flippant remarks.
Mr Osiro is a medical device manufacturing executive and author. marloow@yahoo.com
No comments :
Post a Comment