Jubilee MPs agonise over President Uhuru Kenyatta International Criminal Court summon

The International Criminal Court (ICC) summon to President Uhuru Kenyatta has irked members of the ruling Jubilee alliance.

National Assembly Majority Leader Aden Duale has said MPs allied to Jubilee will meet this week to decide whether the President will honour the summons.

Speaking in Garissa at Hyuga Girls Primary School yesterday, Duale said Jubilee MPs had been summoned for a Parliamentary Group meeting on Wednesday to discuss whether the President should go to The Hague-based international court for status conference or ignore it.

He claimed ICC was determined to humiliate Kenyan leaders. “We have always said the charges facing Kenyans at the ICC are framed up and politically instigated. This has been confirmed by the witnesses giving false testimonies,” he said.

Duale said many witnesses who gave evidence in the court had confirmed that they were coached, and therefore gave false testimonies’.

ICC has ordered President Kenyatta to appear for ICC status conference at The Hague court on October 8. Others facing trial at the ICC are Deputy President William Ruto and radio journalist Joshua Sang, both who have been accused of crimes against humanity during 2007 post election violence.

Yesterday, Duale said lawmakers allied to Jubilee would discuss the implications of the President’s summons to the ICC and whether he should attend the status conference.

“The ICC together with their western masters are determined to humiliate a democratically elected President. If there is no evidence, why should ICC summon the President?” Duale posed.

Elsewhere, Kiambu Governor William Kabogo also urged the President to ignore the summons, claiming there was a sinister move.

He said ICC should wait until the President retires before summoning him, adding: “President Uhuru is duly elected president of a sovereign country”. He continued, “President Uhuru was duly elected and according to Article One of the Constitution, Kenyans have the sovereign power and they have refused”.

The governor claimed the summons was a ploy by the European countries to invite the President and ‘to lock him in as they have always wanted to impose a leader on Kenyans’. Kabogo said he was even ready to go to The Hague to represent the President, as the latter continues to govern the country. The Kiambu Governor spoke yesterday after launching a Sh300 million fund for youth, women and people living with disability in his county.

After the bungled 2007 presidential election, violence erupted in which some 1,300 Kenyans were killed in ethnic clashes. Another 500,000 were displaced from their homes.

The ICC was then invited to deliver justice to the victims and punish the most responsible culprits.

The then ICC Prosecutor Louis Moreno-Ocampo began investigation and picked six prominent Kenyans to be prosecuted. President Kenyatta and his deputy were among the accused.