Ruto’s ICC victory to change Kenya’s political landscape

This is just like the earlier dismissal a few months ago against President Uhuru Kenyatta, where the ICC chamber could not continue with the case.

It was however clear that the case against the two men would soon be dismissed following the first case’s dismissal against President Kenyatta.

The lightening of the case against the two men, both from the Kalenjin tribe, became more apparent after the ICC Chamber ruled against the use by the prosecution of recanted evidence.

Given the weight of the recanted evidence, had the ICC Chamber allowed its use by the prosecution, it’s very unlikely that Ruto and Sang would have survived to tell the story.

This is because witnesses ranged against the two had stronger evidence against them, unlike the situation surrounding President Kenyatta’s case. What made the case against President Kenyatta comparatively weaker, hence easier to dismiss, was the fact that witnesses who had ranged against him simply vanished into thin air and the few who had turned up had very weak evidence against the son of Kenya’s first President Jomo Kenyatta.

Uhuru and Ruto fought tooth and nail to win Kenya’s leadership knowing too well that without it they would not have had any chance in the ICC.

However, after winning the Kenyan leadership, during which Uhuru became commander-in-chief of the country’s armed forces, it became easier for him to control and deal with state apparatus, some of which had collected evidence against him and others for the ICC cases.

Of course, there is no direct evidence to show that both Uhuru and Ruto tampered with evidence that had been ranged against them, but the fact that they had the control of the country’s armed forces, including the powers to hire and fire its top officials, it was easier for the president to know who had done what, when and the people who had been picked to give evidence against them in the ICC.

It’s thus not surprising that Uhuru would become the first to have the case against him dismissed for lack of evidence. That there was ‘interference of witnesses’ was also pointed out by the prosecution during hearing of cases against Uhuru, Ruto and Sang.

In fact, the existence of such ‘interferences against witnesses’ was also touched on by the ICC Chamber ruling on Wednesday evening when it dismissed the cases against Ruto and Sang for lack of evidence.

Apart from stories about ‘interferences of witnesses,’ there had also been reports about killings and disappearances of witnesses who had been organized by the ICC.

But, as already noted, it was difficult to get direct evidence that such killings and disappearances of a few witnesses were linked in any way to the accused in the ICC cases.

In any case, it would not have been easy to link such killings and disappearances to the accused in the Hague for the simple reason that whoever may have been involved in such things, would have been foolish to leave any footprints.

Things would have however been quite different had both Uhuru and Ruto failed to win the March 2013 Kenya General Election. For, with the presidency and command-in-chief being in the hands of another person, the two men would not have survived their cases in the Hague.

In short, the final end of the cases against the two Kenyan leaders should once again serve as a lesson to the International Criminal Court that it cannot successfully convict a sitting head of state, his officials and cronies as long as such a person wields state power.

Examples are galore that the ICC succeeded in the past on leaders who were no longer in power, such as Slobodan Milosevich of the now defunct Yugoslavia, along with his military commanders, Serbian leaders and military commanders, and Ivory Coast’s former president, Laurent Gbagbo.

The ICC should have long learnt from the case of Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir, who has remained on the run for over a decade now since the court accused him of perpetrating crimes against humanity in Darfur.

Despite calling on African states where the Sudanese leader had been on a visit to arrest and hand him over to the ICC, the international criminal court’s calls have always been ignored.

And the situation became more serious late last year after the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, decided to back Kenya’s call-cum-proposal on African countries to withdraw from the Rome Statute which established the ICC.

However, the failure of the world to witness a mass walkout by African countries from the Rome Statute is explained by the intricacy with which each and every African country would have to go through in order to cease its recognition and membership in the ICC after appending to the statute.

For withdrawal from the Rome Statute requires a country to do it on individual basis, in the same way it had done when it appended its signature on it. Had the international court been serious about dealing with the two Kenyan leaders, it would have been prudent to wait until after the end of their leadership tenure.

In fact, they should not have even broached the matter and that would have only been possible if then ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo had not even hinted about it to President Mwai Kibaki after the 2007/8 post election violence that claimed over 1,300 people.

Had the ICC not hinted its plans to take Kenyans to the Hague both Uhuru and Ruto would not have spent the kind of energy they expended to win the March 2013 general election.

And the fact that on Wednesday evening the ICC Chamber mentioned the possibility of reviving the case in the event of fresh evidence against the two men would now force both Uhuru and Ruto to continue working hard together in order to ensure their re-election come the March 2017 general election.

The two leaders are going to work for their re-election because their continued stay as Kenyan leaders is the only guarantee of keeping the ICC at bay.

That explains why both leaders have lately been talking of unifying the ruling Jubilee coalition into one, strong political party in readiness for the forthcoming general election.

After the hiccups of the March 2013 general election in which Uhuru and Ruto scrapped through and could have been easily derailed by the opposition case against their victory, the two men know how they survived in that election and would therefore not want to have a repeat of what happened in that year.

And that explains why both leaders have lately been extremely busy, criss-crossing the country as they try to build their image in opposition’s stronghold in the coast and western regions of the country.

With Ruto also finally out of the case, he is now going to throw his weight behind Uhuru, knowing too well that both of them are in fact not yet out of the woods.

But Ruto’s victory is certainly going to change, quite considerably, Kenya’s political scene, especially in the fight for the leadership of the Kalenjin tribe that has enabled him to forge a powerful political relationship with Uhuru that helped them to form the present Kenyan government under the Jubilee party.

For, after delivery of evidence against Ruto that would however, later be recanted in court, the deputy president’s arch-rival for the leadership of the Kelenjin tribe, Isaac Ruto, threw spanners in the works hoping to replace the deputy president.

Isaac Ruto was strongly convinced that the deputy president would not have managed to wriggle out of the ICC clutches.
Unfortunately, he has been proved wrong. He should now be well prepare for a big fight against the wounded and bruised deputy president as he reasserts himself as the Kalenjin leader in readiness for the forthcoming general election.

• Attilio Tagalile is a journalist/author and media consultant and can be contacted through tagalileattilio@yahoo.co.uk