15 December 2011
A human rights official was asked by the Kenyan government to resign on Wednesday after calling President Mwai Kibaki’s rule an “unacceptable institutionalisation of ethnicity.”
Hassan Omar Hassan, a commissioner with the state-backed Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, last month wrote a newspaper commentary criticising Kibaki’s record.
“Apart from some expanded roads with fly-overs and an economic growth index, Kibaki’s legacy reflects an unacceptable institutionalisation of ethnicity,” Hassan said.
“The leadership of the country’s security apparatus is almost exclusively from Kibaki’s ethnic Kikuyu,” he added in the November 26 article.
Violation
Government spokesman Alfred Mutua said Hassan should resign, accusing him of violating the constitution.
“It is, for lack of a better words, flabbergasting, shocking, amazing, astounding and scary that a commissioner of human rights actually promotes views that can be understood to promote tribal differences similar to those witnessed before and during the post-election violence,” Mutua said in a statement.
“Therefore, we call upon commissioner Mr Hassan Omar Hassan to do the honourable thing and in keeping with … our constitution to step aside and even better resign for he has violated our constitution.”
Following Kibaki’s disputed re-election in 2007, Kenya was ravaged by ethnic violence which claimed some 1,500 lives.
AFP
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