By Joe Ombuor

NAIROBI, KENYA: Kenya and the world watched aghast during President Uhuru Kenyatta’s inauguration last Tuesday as Uganda President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni played the proverbial stone thrower who lives in a glass house by his haughty and shameless criticism of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

May be it is his right to do so, but courtesy requires decorum while enjoying the hospitality of a neighbor. Surely, he had all the time to throw mud at the ICC from the confines of his country. 

The group that gathered at the inauguration venue cheered him along out of the ignorant belief that the Ugandan strongman who is among the remaining relics of Africa’s absolute dictators was indirectly whipping Raila Odinga whom they hate with a passion in spite of all that he has done for the country. I say ignorance because Museveni only succeeded in polluting Kenya’s waters on the nation’s auspicious day as happened on August 27, 2010 when Sudan’s Omar Al Bashir came to spoil our historic constitution promulgation party.

Museveni ought to be the last leader to pour vitriol on the ICC   If anything; Is this not the person who almost blinded his political opponent Dr Kizza Besigye by spraying hot pepper into his eyes?

ICC was not in existence when the late then Uganda President Dr Milton Obote’s Uganda National liberation Army (UNLA) and Museveni’s National Resistance army fought an earth-scorched war in the Luwero Triangle that killed over 800,000 people he referred to at Kasarani. It was from him that the notorious Joseph Kony of the Lords resistance Army (LRA) borrowed and perfected the cruel art of using child soldiers, a crime against humanity.

Joseph Rao Kony brutalized his Acholi people and the neighbouring Langi, turning Northern Uganda into ‘hell on earth’ for 20 odd years under Museveni’s watch. Why? Talk in Northern Uganda has it that Museveni did little to stop Kony as a punishment for these communities who resisted his bush battle to the Pearl of Africa’s seat of power.

It is said Museveni took advantage of Kony’s atrocities to bring the Acholi and the Langi to their knees through dehumanizing acts. Over a period of 20 long years, education in the region and its economic base collapsed, spawning untold poverty, disease and helplessness.

Only after he had achieved his mission of totally subduing the once proud Nilotic people of Northern Uganda, did he order his national army to rout out Kony in 2006. He also sought the assistance of the very ICC he was condemning in Nairobi and invited the Americans to give a hand.

Now, this is the man hailing Kenyans for defying the ICC through their vote, yet he well knows the controversy that surrounded those elections and how the contested results have left the country divided right down the middle.  Hypocricy? Or was the daredevil assault on the ICC a smart collusion with the Kenyan authorities and Museveni was simply playing an assigned role?

Either deliberately or by coincidence, Museveni provoked deep seated tribal emotions that are the hallmarks of Kenyan politics when he saluted outgoing Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka for the ‘statesmanlike manner’ in which they handled the contested election outcome? The crowd, comprising largely of those who voted for Jubilee broke into odious boos of nusu mkate (half bread).  What vacuity! Tanzania’s Jakaya Kikwete who luckily inherited the semblance of a nation state, thanks to founding president Nyerere must have silently cursed into his beard. The ignominious boos moreover amplified how the election divided the country and the herculean task awaiting the new leaders to build national unity.

Probably what Kenyan leaders should have told Museveni when he arrogantly accused the Kenyan Pokot community whole of stealing his cattle was “return our Migingo”. For his laying claim on the island that lies squarely on Kenyan territory is tantamount to theft. His friendship must therefore be treated with caution. May he be reminded that Kenyans are still alive to his “these Jaruo” outburst over Migingo.

The author is a journalist with The Standard.

jombuor@standardmedia.co.ke