Annan backs Kenya violence probe
Guardian Newspaper Nigeria
Tuesday October 21, 2008
FORMER United Nations (UN) Secretary General Kofi Annan has urged the Kenyan government to set up a tribunal for people accused of involvement in violence after last year’s elections.
Annan brokered a power-sharing deal, which ended the violence in February.
Establishing such a tribunal was a central recommendation of a commission headed by a senior judge, Philip Waki, which submitted its report last week.
The commission found that politicians on all sides had stirred up violence.
Waki also said that the police had used excessive force against protestors.
The commission gave Annan a sealed envelope containing the names of suspects and he told the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) he would pass on the information to prosecutors at the appropriate time.
“I think it is important that the government acts on it,” he told the BBC’s Network Africa. “The victims demand justice too.”
Waki Commission: Kenya voices
“The tendency sometimes to protect the perpetrators for the sake of peace – ‘forget and let’s move on’ – doesn’t help society. Impunity should not be allowed to stand.”
More than 1,500 people were killed and some 300,000 more fled their homes after then opposition leader Raila Odinga said he had been cheated of victory by President Mwai Kibaki.
Under the deal brokered by Annan, Odinga became Prime Minister and his Orange Democratic Movement took an equal share of cabinet posts with Kibaki’s party.
Annan dismissed the idea that the Kenyan example had set a dangerous precedent for Africa, by encouraging the idea that even if you lose you can still enter a power-sharing coalition.
“The concept of winning or losing elections is something that we should internalise,” he said.
“We cannot go and create problems and expect to share power.”
He said he thought that Kibaki and Odinga had both gone into the elections hoping to win, but the vote had resulted in an “almost perfect political gridlock.”
“I had come the conclusion during the negotiations that any attempt to re-run the elections, to re-tally, to re-count, would have led to more killings, and there was no certainty that either side would accept the results,” Annan said.
Meanwhile, a Kenyan High Court judge may be charged with stabbing a motorist in the stomach during a road rage incident in Nairobi.
Justice G.B.M. Kariuki was driving his official Mercedes Benz when it was involved in an accident late on Saturday with a saloon car driven by Robert Kamau, a 29-year-old NGO worker.
“We stopped at the scene and he told me I had hit his side mirror,” Kamau told the Standard newspaper from hospital.
“He demanded that I pay him. He then slapped me and took away my keys. As I went for the keys, he stabbed me.”
A senior police source told the paper Kariuki had not been arrested: “We are waiting for instructions, but he will be in court to face a serious charge because there is evidence.”
Kariuki, who is based in the western town of Kakamega, denied the allegations and told the Nairobi Star newspaper that Kamau must have fallen on his own knife as he attacked him.
“It is a self-inflicted injury. He was very drunk,” Kariuki said. “I am a judge and cannot engage in something like that.”
