Update: Now that Fatou Bensouda of Gambia is destined to succeed the voluble Louis Moreno-Ocampo, Kenya has been left with her face plastered with eggs after the 'brotherly' support of Tanzania's CJ Mohamed Chande Othman flopped. The shuttle diplomacy can only save Bashir and no more (read Ocampo6).
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High court Judge's decision to issue a warrant of arrest to Sudan's sitting President Omar Al-Bashir is the ultimate test on judicial independence from executive meddling. The Government never saw it coming or if they did they must have dismissed it with a wave of the hand confident in the old ways of doing things. No wonder they wasted no time to trivialize the not only as insensitive but irresponsible and unpatriotic too.
With predictable impunity and bravado, Foreign Affairs Minister Moses Wetangula, a lawyer himself, has indicated Bashir is headed to our shores courtesy of Kenya Government's invitation. Hiding under so-called IGAD head of states meeting will not fool anybody from the masked brinkmanship. In plain language the executive is reminding the courts who is the boss, period.
Where others see judicial activism, Wetanguala reads destructive insensitivity to national and regional matters of peace. Omar Bashir wouldn't have been happier holding the whole region at ransom with regards to peace in Southern Sudan. And he has neighbouring allies who are more than ready to irk ICC for obvious reasons.
The script is so predictable seeing foreign hands lurking in every shadow. While Bashir sponsored the Janjaweed to butcher (ethnic/black) Africans, our ears will be assaulted with drums of war castigating the West for imperialism. In the process the butcher of Khartoum will have his bloody hands cleansed with sectarian and racial detergent in the name of IGAD and/or AU.
By inviting Bashir to Kenya again the Government is rubbing salt to the wound it inflected on our national body in August 2010 during the new constitution's promulgation. If we ever thought that act of obtuse impunity was unfortunate and regrettable, well the Government is reminding all and sundry KENYA IKO NA WENYEWE.
You see with no spine to remind Sudan that the ruling was an act from our independent courts, Wetangula is circumventing the core issue to serve political expediency by throwing the balderdash that expulsion of ambassadors is a normal thing.
Poor Prof Githu Muigai must be precariously dangling between the rock and the dark blue sea. Like Wentangula he knows the LAW is LAW but again he knows which side of his bread is buttered and by whom. Damned if he acts professionally and damned if he does an Amos Wako.