Kenya

Kenyan government has no intention of setting up promised tribunals says NGO head

Article published on the 2009-03-31 Latest update 2009-03-31 17:13 TU

Mwai Kibaki (centre) and Raila Odinga (right) arrive at parliament in 2008
(Photo: AFP )

The executive director of Transparency International told RFI that the Kenyan government has no real intention of bringing those responsible for electoral violence in last year’s elections to tribunal.

Job Ogonda says that the tribunal promised to the people of Kenya “is at stage zero” and that the nature of the proceedings has not even been decided.

He says that the Kenyan government power-sharing agreement is becoming more of a liability than a blessing.

“Ministers are bickering over the scale and manifestation of corruption […] the leadership is not only showing a lack of political will, they are showing a lot of political self-interest in making these reforms […] parliament is acting in an extremely self interested way.”

Among the arguments, there appears to be little interest in setting up tribunals.

“There’s no genuine interest in it […] if half of Kibaki’s votes came from somebody who perpetrated political violence, would Kibaki have the political will to have a tribunal that expeditiously tries his latest political interest - I think not.”

Ex-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urged the leaders of Kenya to implement the reforms they promised at a meeting of the Kofi Annan foundation in Geneva on Monday.

The meeting was to review the situation in Kenya, a year after electoral violence killed up to 1000 people.