Mukhisa Kituyi<\/p>\n
3 December 2011<\/p>\n
opinion<\/p>\n
Some time last year, I heard a top official from Burundi make a very spirited case at an EAC conference that his government deserved an apology from Kenya. His reason: The EastAfrican newspaper had disparaged the elections in his country as not adequately democratic, and the paper is published in Nairobi.<\/p>\n
This incident flashed back to mind when Khartoum recalled its ambassador to Nairobi and threw out the Kenyan envoy over a court ruling in Nairobi.<\/p>\n
In nations at different levels of separation of powers and independence of organs of governance, we always have different appreciation of how far media and courts represent the views of government.<\/p>\n
Hence the observation that Justice Ombija’s ruling “should not be seen in isolation” says tonnes about who courts speak for in Khartoum. They do not speak in isolation.<\/p>\n
Nairobi has a pleasant duty to reassure its neighbours and friends that its media houses and courts do not hold brief for the executive. Indeed, that the very executive has lately become the prime target of both institutions.<\/p>\n
When courts in France and Spain have made significantly embarrassing decisions regarding foreign heads of state, the governments of those countries have never attempted to condemn the courts.<\/p>\n
They try to make the aggrieved parties understand the burden of independent judiciaries.<\/p>\n
But rather than build on this line, Nairobi is acting as if the High Court owes it an apology.<\/p>\n
The potential to vindicate Khartoums’s over-reaction by our panic response risks negating the single most important benefit from Ombija’s ruling: that Kenya is coming of age as a democracy.<\/p>\n
We are now all over the place explaining the importance of Sudan in regional security initiatives.<\/p>\n
From Somalia to South Kordofan, Abyei and Blue Nile State, we see the role of al-Bashir as a force for stability.<\/p>\n
Next assistant minister for Foreign Affairs Richard Onyonka sees malice in the action of ICJ.<\/p>\n
We fault the courts for the timing of their ruling when a decision on Khartoum’s application to join EAC was going to be made, and Kenya was about to host an Igad summit with al-Bashir on the guest list.<\/p>\n
These complaints may well be mostly true. But is a court ruling faulted on its logic and consistency with the law or on the significance of the parties that may be affected by the ruling?<\/p>\n
Similarly, why, in this time and age, do we tie the fortunes of Sudan and the relations between the peoples of our two countries to the personal tribulations of president al-Bashir?<\/p>\n
About South Kordofan, Abyei and Blue Nile, al-Bashir’s government is the offender not a partner in seeking peace.<\/p>\n
It is this government dropping bombs on black villages whose population fought with SPLM but were defined to be on the northern side of the new divide in Kordofan.<\/p>\n
They are building up forces across from Blue Nile and flying sorties across international borders they recently announced to recognise.<\/p>\n
It is Khartoum which is trying to drive the Ng\u00c3’k Dinka out of Abyei so as to short-circuit the pursuit of a just solution to the disputed border.<\/p>\n
So these cases do not negate what Justice Ombija is saying. Here dialogue with al-Bashir is with the aggressor not a partner in peace.<\/p>\n
On the issues of sensitivity and timing, the Government of Kenya may be right.<\/p>\n
When a judiciary is fast awakening from years of bondage, it may be tempted to over-state its freedom.<\/p>\n
Decisions may be made whose ramifications are way beyond the balance of legal argument.<\/p>\n
In most stable democracies, different agencies of governance build internal mechanisms to share thinking on what constitutes the national interest.<\/p>\n
One of the problems of a newly freed judiciary is that confidential dialogue of this nature is subsumed under fear of executive influence on the content of judicial rulings.<\/p>\n
Seeing how much reaction government has displayed on Justice Nicholas Ombija’s ruling, one question begs to be answered: how did the Government, knowing the importance of the case, fail to make a robust representation at the hearing?<\/p>\n
Did the importance of the case only hit them after the ruling? Or were they underestimating how much some judges may desire to herald a declaration of independence?<\/p>\n
Government has a point about the dilemma of enforcing the Rome Statutes in light of the Vienna Convention on the immunity of heads of state and government.<\/p>\n
But when the government emphasises our commitment to joint AU and Igad declarations on ignoring the ICC ruling, are we elevating political solidarity declarations above the provisions of the Rome Statutes to which we are signatories and which constitute a constitutional obligation in Kenya?<\/p>\n
Last year, South Africa invited President al-Bashir to a summit and then informed him that it might not be in his interest to honour the invitation.<\/p>\n
Dr Kituyi is a director of the Kenya Institute of Governance.<\/em><\/p>\nAllAfrica – All the Time<\/p>\n
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Mukhisa Kituyi 3 December 2011 opinion Some time last year, I heard a top official from Burundi make a very spirited case at an EAC conference that his government deserved an apology from Kenya. His reason: The EastAfrican newspaper had disparaged the elections in his country as not adequately democratic, and the paper is published in Nairobi. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n
Kenya: Ombija May Have Been Hasty, but Government Shouldn't Panic - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/12\/04\/kenya-ombija-may-have-been-hasty-but-government-shouldnt-panic\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Kenya: Ombija May Have Been Hasty, but Government Shouldn't Panic - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"Mukhisa Kituyi 3 December 2011 opinion Some time last year, I heard a top official from Burundi make a very spirited case at an EAC conference that his government deserved an apology from Kenya. 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