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Former President Mwai Kibaki |
By FELIX OLICK IN THE HAGUE
Deputy
President William Ruto has opened fire on former President Kibaki over
the horrific 2008 post-election violence as he fights to defend himself
at The Hague.
Ruto now seems to be shifting from former Prime Minister Raila Odinga as the architect of his woes in his new legal strategy.
Observers
of the International Criminal Court are unanimous that unlike the
pre-trial hearings when Ruto largely questioned why the prosecution
picked on him and not Raila who led the ODM brigade, this time, he has
trained his guns on Kibaki and his former allies. “It is indeed true
that Ruto’s strategy has changed,” noted Donald Rabala, Senior Advocate
of the High Court of Kenya.
“The reason is that he has since
realised that the only defence plausible for him right now is to state
the facts as they happened,” he said.
On Thursday, Ruto’s defence
lawyers tore into the character of Kibaki as they rebutted the testimony
of the sixth prosecution witness insisting that he openly rigged the
2007 presidential polls.
Ruto’s lawyer David Hooper, painted the
picture of the retired president as a dishonest man who planted the seed
of tribalism in Government and watered it with corruption.
Plotted to rig
“As
the election came closer, was it right that there was apprehension that
Kibaki would not deal fairly and squarely with the election process,”
asked Hooper and the witness, the first Kalenjin, agreed.
The
British lawyer maintained that Kibaki plotted to influence the poll
outcome by single-handedly appointing 19 out of 22 Commissioner to the
defunct Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK).
He said that even the
late ECK Chairman Samuel Kivuitu expressed his reservation with 9 of
the commissioners ahead of the polls and called them ‘riggers.’
Hooper
even claimed that on the night of December 30th, 2007, unknown people
broke into the presidential tallying centre at Kenyatta International
Conference Centre, Nairobi. “I understand that on the night of the
election on December 30th, 2007, some people broke into the tallying
centre. Did you come to hear about that? asked Hooper
Witness: No.
Mr Hooper: For the ordinary
Kenyan seated at home, would you agree that there would be sufficient
evidence that the elections had been stolen?
Witness: Yes
The European Union, the
USA, the United Kingdom and Kenyan observers were dissatisfied with the
way the elections had been conducted. Would that be fair to say?
Witness: Seemingly.
Njahira
Gitahi of Strathmore Law School says that Ruto is fighting for his life
and would undoubtedly leave no stone unturned in his quest to be
vindicated of the serious charges.
“It is said that a dying man
will clutch at a straw. This is not to say that Ruto is already losing
his case, but is instead trying to exploit all avenues to shift the
blame away from him,” she told The Standard on Sunday. “His counsel
might be employing this tactic due to a lack of options. Perhaps, being
unable to prove why Ruto is not guilty, they intend instead to prove why
other people are more guilty than Ruto is,” says Gitahi.
Her
sentiments are echoed by Rabala who says that Ruto is compelled to “put
the blame where he thinks it belongs because its now about self
preservation and securing his freedom and clearing his name.”
After
he was committed to full trial, Ruto fired some of his lawyers
including Kenyan Attorney Kioko Kilukumi and adopted nearly the entire
defence team of former Civil Service Chief Francis Muthaura.
During
the explosive and tense cross-examination Thursday, Hooper maintained
that Kibaki betrayed the hopes and aspirations of a better future
Kenyans had in the Narc Government after his overwhelming victory in
2002.
He pointed at Kibaki’s failure to honour his memorandum of
understanding with Raila, failure to deliver a new Constitution in 100
days and an alleged failure to ‘de-ethnicise’ the civil service and weed
out corruption. “By 2007, there was a perception that he had created an
over powerful presidency, a regime that had a criminal element. Would
you agree? posed Hooper and to which the witness said yes.
The
Queens counsel claimed that after Kibaki took over power in 2002, he
sacked many senior Kalenjins in the civil service, in the military and
in the police
Quoting from an excerpt of the Waki Commission report on inquiry into
post-election violence, Hooper said Kibaki’s administration retreated
into an ‘ethnic enclave’.
He singled out the Anglo leasing scandal and the cocaine haul as evidence that Kibaki had failed to tackle corruption.
But this was not the first time Ruto is blaming Kibaki for his tribulations since his trial opened at The Hague on November 10.