In case you missed it, last month The Hague Trials Kenya interviewed Maina Kiai, the former chairman of Kenya’s National Human Rights Commission and director of InformAction. Kiai gave his take on events leading up to the 2007/8 post-election violence: “In 2006, I said this on television: ‘what has happened in the referendum has exposed such fault lines, we better be careful.’ I said that a number of things came up [after the referendum].The level of ethnic divisions was sky high. The amount of corruption was incredible. The weaknesses in our security system were immense. I also said that the elections were going to be crucial. Kibaki was beginning to change the ECK [Electoral Commission of Kenya]. And he decided not to keep to the gentleman’s agreement that he signed in 1997 - called the IPPG [Inter-Parties Parliamentary Group] - that in fact helped him become president because it resulted in a fairer electoral commission. I said that if he then began taking us backwards to where we had been before, then the only credible and acceptable result would be Kibaki loosing because it’s his commission, it’s his people. It’s common sense that if you put your people to run the election, then the only time we will believe the result – whether it is right or wrong – is if you lose. I had that conversation with Martha Karua, the then minister for justice. I said: ‘you are setting yourselves up. This is dangerous.’ I was ignored.” You can read the full interview here: bit.ly/THTKMaina
Posted on: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 17:10:00 +0000
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