The way things are going, we need international monitors on the ground right now here in Kenya to start documenting in advance crimes that may sooner or later warrant the attention of the International Criminal Court and other global justice mechanisms.
We are enduring coordinated pre-election violence that sends very ominous signals on what is likely to unfold come the actual polls in August next year.
Illegal militia at the service of politicians have been unleashed in many different parts of the country while the State security machinery looks on helplessly. The impunity with which these criminal gangs are operating indicates that they have official sanction, that many of them are sponsored and armed by the government, or by untouchable pro-government politicians, to wage war against citizens who stray from the narrow Kenya Kwanza path.
State-sponsored terrorism must be nipped in the bud, and there must also be a very clear message that the crimes presently being committed will have serious consequences. If an impotent or compromised governance justice, law and order machinery cannot be trusted to hold government warlords to account, there will be no option but to escalate things to international tribunals.
We need to be reminded that in the wake of the 2007-2008 post-election carnage, some key politicians, government functionaries and security operatives found themselves going through the ignominy of being paraded in the dock at the International Criminal Court at the Hague to answer to charges of crimes against humanity.
The accused were not the foot soldiers and hired goons, but the key leaders seen to have exercised command and control authority over the gangs that almost led Kenya down the slippery path to full-scale civil war.
Those in the dock included President William Ruto , deputy president at the time, and his then boss President Uhuru Kenyatta. Others were the former Head of Public Service Francis Muthaura, former Commissioner of Police Mohammed Hussein Ali, former Cabinet Minister Henry Kosgey and radio journalist Joshua arap Sang.
All the six got away with it, being freed on technicalities around lack of adequate evidence to secure convictions, some of that out of the disappearance or intimidation and or bribery of key witnesses. In a nutshell, they were not tried and adjudged not guilty, but freed in circumstances that would allow re-opening of trials at some future date should fresh evidence be presented. To that extent, dark clouds still hover over their respective heads.
Yet, it is apparent that lessons from The Hague have never been taken seriously. Those today presiding over a state of terror and anarchy must be reminded in no uncertain terms that the world is watching.
It is not enough for President Ruto or his Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen to issue meaningless condemnation of political thuggery or to point fingers at opposition leaders, while taking no action. When the president and his security minister demonstrate that they are unable to stem the dangerous slide towards total anarchy, the only conclusion is that they are either completely incompetent or culpable in the deployment of armed thugs, some of them police officers.
If the president is innocent, he must go beyond diversionary finger-pointing and demand that those he has appointed to secure the peace either perform or go. Mr Murkomen and Internal Security Principal Secretary Raymond Omollo should be first in line to either shape up or ship out, because they are clearly part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
They should be closely followed by Inspector-General of Police Douglas Kanja and the Director of Criminal Investigations Mohammed Amin, who both debase their offices by operating as wilful appendages of President Ruto’s political apparatus. Both, in any case, should be in the dock for presiding over the active participation of their officers in criminal political gangs as well as abductions, enforced disappearances, assault, torture and murders of real and imagined political threats to a looming dictatorship.
If the political thuggery we are presently witnessing is allowed to go unchecked, things will get far worse as the 2027 elections approach, and we will be in real danger of another Armageddon. We very narrowly survived the last bout of self-inflicted political violence in 2007, but we will not be so lucky if there is another outbreak 20 years later.
International mediators helped broker a political settlement last time around, but this time we must demand the necessary intervention in advance of any descent into chaos rather than after the fact. Prevention, as we know, is better than a cure.
Mr Gaitho, an independent journalist, is former NMG Managing Editor for Special Projects. [email protected] .
