What do you make of Bashir's visit?

By Kipkirui K’Telwa

ICC chief prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo indicts President Omar al Bashir for atrocities committed in Darfur. This means the judges at The Hague are waiting for Bashir to be hauled into their courts face justice for atrocities his Janjaweed men visited on the Darfurians.

 Since last year when Ocampo secured indictments, Bashir had remained within Sudan for fear of being arrested. He has since ventured to Chad

In July, Bashir skipped an African Union Heads of State meeting in Kampala after word leaked that President Museveni planned to have him arrested and sent to The Hague to face Ocampo. That was being a bad neighbour, wasn’t it? How could he do that?

But on August 27, Bashir, armed with an invitation letter from the Government of the Republic of Kenya, walked into Uhuru Park, exchanged pleasantries with President Kibaki and other dignitaries before settling down to witness promulgation of the country’s new constitution.

Then ODM came out of their hiding den alleging that they did not know who signed Bashir’s invitation letter. But ODM is part of the Grand Coalition government and therefore it is the government. ODM, led by Prime Minister of the Republic of Kenya Raila Odinga, stands accused of omission and commissions for either doing a prohibited act is the same as failing to prevent occurrence of a prohibited act.

Forget about impending referendum in Sudan, being a good neighbour to Sudan or even the "mchawi" tales by PM and figure this out: Ocampo is set to indict Kenyans who perpetrated the 2008 post-election violence that saw 1300 people killed and thousands of others displaced. So was the government seeking comradeship as it awaits Ocampo’s next move?

Finally, with the release of the population census results, does any leader stand to benefit from Ocampo’s indictment of perpetrators of post-election violence?