The mourning mood is palpable and the questions on what led to Sunday helicopter crash innumerable.
The sense of loss over deaths of two ministers, two pilots and two government VIP security guards, is unbearable.
As is usual with VIP deaths in Kenya, conspiracy theorists are having a field day in face of contradictory statements by State officials.
The claims the crash could be the work of saboteurs is added fire by The Hague’s court admission that the late Internal Security minister Prof George Saitoti, was one of its key witnesses. Now, it is not clear if this was simply on the basis that his office was for some time the conduit or liaison for communication between International Criminal Court and Kenya Government.
Indeed, Saitoti was for a time acting Foreign minister while also chairing the Cabinet sub-committee on ICC-related matters. It is not inconceivable that because he was the direct recipient of ICC requests for certain evidence and documents from the government he could have put himself in a precarious situation given the sensitivity of what was passing through his hands.
But given that the sub-committee, which worked like a Clearing House for Kenya-ICC logistical and evidentiary cargo, was made up of Cabinet members from both sides of the Grand Coalition, it is unlikely Saitoti knew anything the others did not.
But even if we dismiss this claim as wild and a figment of the imagination, we also need to stop and look at the state of anxiety in the country over the upcoming ICC trials.
powerful forces
Riding on the back of the wild claims is the fact Saitoti was a Presidential candidate, and whether right or wrong, it is inevitable that claims he was a target for elimination cannot be ruled out. After all, we have a pattern of unresolved political assassinations targeting popular or influential politicians.
The fact that assassinations linked to powerful forces in government have taken place before makes it impossible to turn away the Kenyan mind from this pattern by suspicion, unless by way of truly independent and transparent investigations.
Anything short of this will only let the deaths of Saitoti, his assistant minister Joshua Ojode, as well as security officers Joshua Tonkei and Thomas Murimi, as well as police pilots Nancy Gituanja and Luke Oyugi, be subject of speculation for years to come.
We also owe it as a national duty and out of moral conscience to leave no doubt in the minds of the families of those who died in the crash, that the cause is made clear. It may be bitter, assuming it turns out the helicopter came down out of malfunctioning or failure of key systems and parts, or out of negligence or error of judgement on the part of those either piloting or guiding it from the ground.
