MPs plan to discredit Waki report to ‘save’ DP Ruto

Just days after President Uhuru Kenyatta launched a diplomatic offensive in a bid to reverse the International Criminal Court’s decision to use recanted testimony against Deputy President William Ruto, Jubilee MPs have called for a parliamentary probe into claims that investigations by the Waki commission were compromised.

The coalition is planning to go for all those who worked with or oversaw the operations of the Justice

Philip Waki led-Commission of Inquiry into Post-Election Violence over claims of witness-coaching and evidence-fixing. National Assembly's Majority Leader Aden Duale and the Chairman of the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee Samuel Chepkonga want MPs to form a Parliamentary Select Committee that is likely to summon Justice Philip Waki and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga to shed light on allegations by Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria.

This is the latest onslaught against the ongoing trial of Ruto and Joshua Sang, after President Uhuru Kenyatta rallied some nations at the UN meeting to support Kenya's quest to amend an ICC rule that judges relied on to admit prior-recorded statements of five hostile witnesses in the upcoming Assembly of State Parties meeting in November.

The open-ended Committee of Ministers of Foreign Affairs on the ICC has tasked African Union Chairperson Robert Mugabe to lobby for a resolution requiring the UN Security Council to defer ICC cases against Ruto and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

Locally, the 15-member select committee will investigate the activities of the Waki commission, and other state and non-state actors whose findings formed the basis of post-election investigations by the ICC. The strategy of the re-opening of the post-poll chaos investigations five years after the ICC took over the cases, comes amid murmurs within the Jubilee coalition that the President's wing was not doing enough to shield Ruto from the ICC.

These are some of the issues that will be addressed this morning in the Jubilee Coalition's Parliamentary Group meeting.

Mr Duale also said that the committee will compel Justice Waki to give evidence on the activities of his team.

"It is sad that up to now, people whose money was used in setting up the Waki commission do not even know the names of the 16 people who were in the Waki envelope. Waki will be accorded an opportunity to say what he knows. We don't want Waki and his team to go to the grave with all these unresolved issues," said Duale.

"Waki went ahead to give a partial report to then President Kibaki in the presence of Kofi Annan. He gave the report to people who had no locus standi. I was surprised that the 10th Parliament did not debate the report. This motion will give an opportunity to the 11th Parliament to consider the report," added Duale.

The coalition has drafted a motion for the formation of the team which, among other issues, will investigate allegations that some of the witnesses who appeared before the commission, and who it claims eventually ended up at the ICC, may have been procured.

Mr Chepkonga has already drafted the motion for the formation of the committee.

The committee will be expected to table its report in the House within a period of ninety days "to inform debate on the subsequent motion for noting the contents of the report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Post-Election violence which was tabled in the House on 4th December 2008..."

Although the motion has been drafted by Chepkonga, sources within Jubilee intimated that it could be brought to the House as a Government-sponsored motion.

"Serious allegations have been made that witnesses were procured with the intention of giving evidence towards one side of the political divide during the proceedings of the Waki commission. If we find that the witnesses were compromised, then the Waki report should not be a guide in any forum anywhere," said Chepkonga.

"If the committee finds that there are people who breached the law, they could be recommended for prosecution," he added.