Central Organisation of Trade Unions (Cotu) boss Francis Atwoli made unwarranted remarks that Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka is unfit to succeed President Kibaki.
Atwoli was addressing the Kenya Plantation and Agricultural Workers’ Union (KPAWU) where he was elected unopposed as Secretary General.
Atwoli had just crowned himself winner, like Napoleon and Bokassa, in the first one-candidate polls under the new Constitution!
Why is the labour movement still practising one-man polls in a democratic country? That’s a story for another day.
Atwoli sought to disqualify the VP on two frivolous grounds. First, because of the VP’s ongoing shuttle diplomacy across Africa seeking AU support to have the Ocampo Six tried in Kenya. Second, that the VP has been involved in the fictional grouping called KKK alliance. On both grounds, Atwoli twists and deliberately misrepresents the VP’s views and mission.
Atwoli had chosen his voters carefully and gathered them at the Tom Mboya Labour College in Kisumu. Farmers from Rift Valley, Central and Eastern provinces had neither elected Atwoli nor endorsed his outrageous claims against Kalonzo.
Selfless and magnanimous
Atwoli completely failed to appreciate that Kalonzo’s shuttle mission is one of the most selfless and magnanimous ever undertaken by a Kenyan diplomat. If this delicate mission had been left to Atwoli’s political gods, they would have ensured Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta and former Higher Education Minister William Ruto were whisked away to The Hague to clear the decks for them in the 2012 contest.
Kalonzo is a lawyer, diplomat and peacemaker of long standing. He relishes competitive electoral contests and would not want to win a contest where the field has been thinned by intrigue and false witness.
Atwoli refused to tell the "voters" that the reason Kenya and other African countries are opposed to the ICC’s performance, is the grandstanding of Chief Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo. The global court is playing loose with prosecutions from Africa.
For instance, Israel, fought Gaza at the exact time as the murder and mayhem of the Kenya post-election violence. Israel used Air Force bomber jet fighters on Gaza, which are more sophisticated than the F-5s the Kenya Air Force parades during National Days.
Gaza is a besieged slum where people live in more desperate circumstances than Nairobi’s Kibera. The Israeli Air Force pounded Gaza mercilessly, including the United Nations University, killing 1,850 and destroying infrastructure on a horrific scale. There were clearly crimes against humanity committed in Gaza as the Kenyan PEV that killed 1,350 and displaced 650,000 with Sh100 billion worth of infrastructure and economic damage.
Unlike the Israelis and the Palestinians, Kenyan political players swiftly embarked on a peace process producing a coalition government and later unveiled one of the greatest constitutions ever devised in a developing country.
It seems the ICC does not even know where Israel is on the map. It is this blinkered procedure of the ICC that Kenya and AU are protesting against, not necessarily a blanket withdrawal from the Rome Statute. That and not Atwoli’s hypocrisy is the heart of the matter.
—Muthui Kariuki, VP’s Special Adviser
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