12 February, 2009

The Hague Beckons: Kenya MPs fail to Establish a Special Tribunal

Kenya Parliament has failed to establish a special tribunal to try post election masterminds. This implies that Koffi Annan should go ahead and hand over the secret envelope compiled by the Waki commission to the International Criminal Court at the Hague. The envelope contains a list of prime suspects who planned, funded and executed the post election violence that occured in Kenya between December 2007 and March 2008.

101 MPs supported the motion while 93 opposed it. The constitution amendment bill which sought to entrench special tribunal courts in the constitution failed to garner the requisite 145 mps needed to pass the motion. This was despite President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga presence in parliament.

House speaker, Kenneth Marende made the ruling: "The nos have exceeded the minimum (by 20 votes), consequently therefore honourable members, the motion is negative and therefore lost".

The bill can only be brought back to the house after 6 months.

Kenyans eyes are now on Koffi Annan watching his every move and expecting him to keep his part of the bargain and hand over the envelope to ICC to kick off the process of investigating post election violence masterminds.

There is however a feeling that Koffi Annan does not want to turn tables and would have preferred a local tribunal within the control of Kibaki and Raila as long as there is a resemblence of peace in Kenya. This is what Kenyans made of Koffi Annan's recent meeting with the prime minister and his extension of the grace period to give the government time to pass the constitution amendment bill.

Will Koffi Annan play ball?

1 comment:

  1. the perpetrators of the post election violence are actually domestic terrorists and must be treated like so. as a rule of the thumb, all terror pests should be put away because they wont change, ICC has this one chance to teach Africa's politicians an unforgettable lesson with Kenya as an example

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