Palaver

Those who suspect they are on the preliminary list of ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo have reason to shake right in their boots. The Argentine lawyer who often is fast with his mouth says he will not only be pursuing justice for those killed, displaced and dispossessed, but will "make Kenya’s case an example to the world". Woe unto those on his list, as they will be guinea pigs in his experiment to ending impunity. Now why have the VIP proponents of The Hague option gone silent?

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Before Barack Obama’s Democratic Party whitewashed Republican Party led by George W Bush, he was picked out of the crowd by John Kerry — who himself failed to dislodge Bush. It is remarkable what Kerry used to say the ‘W’ between the former President’s names stood for. "The ‘W’ stands for wrong choices, wrong judgement, wrong priorities, wrong direction for our country," he said frequently in his campaigns. This is the line Obama was to take and the rest is history.

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If you thought MPs are well paid with a million bob-plus a month and the reserve price of their vote must be half that, this will shock you. Word in the corridors of Parliament has it that for every MP who sung the PNU tune regarding Ringera, there was Sh50,000 to pick. But if you were from Central Kenya, and felt you would naturally be on the side of the grandpa from Meru, you were only given Sh20,000. We doubt even Ringera knows the goldmine politicians found in his predicament after President Kibaki stuck out his neck for him.

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Is there something fishy here? We hope it is not akin to what happened when Administration Police were ferried upcountry in a private company’s buses to serve as party agents in polling stations, in 2007. On Sunday and Monday, over 50 buses from the same private firm, packed with uniformed military officers, drove through Nakuru, Kampi Ya Moto and Mogotio towards Marigat. Why the private transport? Has the military privatised transport, and decided to outsource?

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And finally...

Every election in Kenya now seems to be a bid to prove Oklohama’s editor in the 1940s Mr Oscar Ameringer right. His conclusion: "Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other."

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