Monthly Archives: November 2015

Podesta Group lobbies Washington Post, New York Times, Politico, Roll Call, Foreign Policy, Guardian, Financial Times, Reuters, Washington Diplomat for Kenyatta Gov’t

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Kenyan taxpayers paid The Podesta Group of Washington, DC for public relations/lobbying contacts with these media outlets on behalf of their Government in the first half of 2015.  The Podesta Group provided similar or related lobbying services at the same time for the governments of Azerbaijan, Myanmar, Iraq, India, and Vietnam, among various others, aside from their nongovernmental clients.

I’m certainly not suggesting that there is anything wrong with the Government of Kenya spending tax dollars on working media contacts when it isn’t paying teacher’s salaries or meeting basic human needs in health care, for instance.  After all, the United States and various multinational and other foreign donors can be counted on to spend their taxpayer dollars to help ameliorate the consequences of this choice by the Government of Kenya.

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Kenyans for Peace with Truth and Justice statement to ICC Assembly of States Parties

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Kenyan civil society groups who have been carrying the lonely burden of advocating for judicial accountability for the organized portion of the post election violence once again stood in the face of state power this week.

The Kenyan government sought to divert the International Criminal Court proceedings against Deputy President William Ruto for crimes against humanity through appeal to the Assembly of State Parties to overrule the Court on the admissibility of certain evidence and through a separate “investigation” of the prosecution.

I don’t know personally whether or not Ruto is guilty of the things he is accused of, but there appears to a great fear on the part of Ruto and the current political leadership that he might well be convicted by the judges.  Certainly Kenya’s senior politicians would know better than I the details of who committed the underlying acts forming the basis of the charges.

Statement By KPTJ at the 14th Assembly Of States Parties Of The Rome Statute

Kenyans for Peace with Truth and Justice is a collective of over 30 civil society organisations, which has been seeking accountability for the post election violence of 2008.

Mr./Mme. President Once again, this Assembly is being called upon to discuss concerns raised by the Republic of Kenya regarding the application of the Rome Statute in on-going trials before the International Criminal Court. This time Kenya is asking the Assembly to make a finding on the application of Rule 68.

Kenya is also asking for an ad hoc mechanism of five independent jurists to audit the Prosecutor’s witness identification and recruitment processes in a petition endorsed by some 190 parliamentarians.
The Kenyan state thus desires that this Assembly make a finding on a matter that is a pending decision in the proceedings of the Court. Such a finding would constitute a direct and wholly unwarranted interference by this Assembly with the judicial mandate of the court.

It also creates a very dangerous precedent – that States Parties with active situations and cases before the Court can reverse decisions or leverage political pressure on the Court through the ASP, to take decisions in favour of the States’ positions.

This is not the first time that Kenya has asked the Assembly to discuss a matter that is already before the court. During the 12th Assembly in this very hall, discussions resulted in the amendment of Rule 134 of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence and Rule 68 was also approved.

The request to discuss the Prosecutor’s strategy of identification and engagement of witnesses is an escalation of the failed request made at ASP 13 for a discussion on the ‘ICC Prosecutor’s conduct’. States refused to have this discussion then. The present request for an ad hoc mechanism should be rejected as an affront to the independence of the Prosecutor’s office

Witness tampering

It is important that this Assembly steps back and considers the context in Kenya in relation to which the discussions about Rule 68 and the conduct of the Prosecutor are taking place.

The Kenyan cases before the ICC have been affected by unprecedented levels of witness interference characterized by bribery and even elimination. In the Kenyan Case 2, The Prosecutor versus Uhuru Kenyatta, 8 members of the Mungiki militia group who allegedly interacted with Mr. Kenyatta during the post-election violence in Kenya in 2008 were reported to have been killed or forcibly disappeared.

Also, intermediaries for Mr. Kenyatta allegedly approached three Mungiki insiders, attempting to enlist them to identify other witnesses who would be willing to give exonerating evidence in favour of Mr. Kenyatta.
In the Ruto case, the Prosecutor has alleged that 16 of the original 42 witnesses have either been killed, recanted or turned hostile. One of the witnesses who died, Meshack Yebei, was abducted in Eldoret, the home area of Mr. Ruto, and turned up dead in another part of the country that is about 1000 kilometres away.

Arrest warrants

In an attempt to bring accountability for the interference with witnesses in Kenya, the ICC has issued three arrest warrants against three Kenyan nationals. However, none of these has been executed, as the Kenyan government has erected multiple legal hurdles to defeat the surrender of the accused persons to the ICC. This is in clear violation of its duty to cooperate with the ICC.

Who killed the witnesses and why? Who wanted them killed and why?

We do not currently know the answers to these questions. Whether or not the questions can be answered is directly tied to the conduct of the Kenyan state.

While showing no interest in the toxic domestic situation in the country, which has intimidated and silenced witnesses, the Kenyan state deployed a massive political strategy t influence how the cases from Kenya are handled. This has involved creating a highly charged, divisive and volatile political atmosphere.

This Assembly is now in effect being asked by Kenya to compound and reward the silencing of witnesses, and the shielding from accountability of those against whom the court has issued arrest warrants.

It would be a travesty if this august Assembly lent its powers to Kenya’s campaign to shield from accountability those who — because they have ultimate power over the country– have already used their positions to delay or defeat accountability for the crimes committed in the country.

This Assembly must think about the victims of the crimes committed in Kenya. Already, the Kenyatta case has been brought to an early end because of interference with witnesses. The underlying reason for the Rule 68 controversy is witness tampering. This Assembly must not condone it.

This Assembly must speak out clearly in defense of the independence of the Court. Cases being tried by the Court must be tried in the courtroom, not in the corridors of the ASP.

It is important for States Parties to understand that Kenya’s interventions are not aimed at strengthening the Court. Kenya continues to employ double-speak where it pledges to cooperate with the Court while at the same time actively frustrating it from continued investigation and prosecution of the cases at home and orchestrating a sustained international campaign against it abroad.

The Kenya State’s endgame, as publicly declared by various officials including the President, is the immediate, and premature, termination of the case against William Ruto and Joshua Sang, just as was witnessed with the Kenyatta case.

Let us remember also that Kenya has to date not offered domestic solutions for justice, accountability and meaningful and equitable reparations for the victims of post-election violence. Over 1,133 were killed, thousands sexually assaulted, maimed and over 600,000 displaced.. The Director of Public Prosecutions says a majority of these crimes cannot be prosecuted, a statement reiterated by the President.

Mr. President, Kenya’s domestic politics continue to define and inform its interventions on the ICC and at Assemblies of States Parties. As Kenya enters another pre-election season, characterized by inflamed rallies, hate speech and vituperation of the ICC and the Prosecutor we remind this Assembly that the ICC still remains the only viable hope for justice, truth-telling, accountability and reparations for the victims of the post-election violence in Kenya and the only credible deterrent against future similar crises.

KPTJ/19/11/15

Is it still easy to buy Kenyan identity documents?

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In October 2013 The Standard ran an investigative expose on the readily available purchase of Kenyan identity documents including birth certificate, national identity card, school certificates, drivers license or certificate of good conduct from the Kenyan Police.  

This was shortly after the Westgate attack and many years after the disclosure of the Anglo Leasing national security procurement fraud schemes which the Kibaki and Kenyatta administrations elected to pay for rather than prosecute.  Since then we have seen growing corruption in multiple sectors, even with the sugar and charcoal smuggling issues involving the Kenya Defense Forces as reported by UN monitors and the new Journalists for Justice report.  Police reform under the 2010 constitution has been sidetracked by politicians who prefer other appoaches to those established in the law.  

Are false Kenyan identity and other documents still readily available for purchase?

Having apologized for having gotten our shoes in the way of the vomit, donors to Kenya’s government are now finally alarmed again about the (ongoing) corruption

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Here is the latest from Kenya’s Journalists for Justice on the corrupt involvement of personnel in the Kenya Defense Forces in the charcoal and sugar smuggling trade.

It’s not so much that I’m jaded, it’s just that I have watched this movie before–and even been an “extra” of sorts in one of the previous remakes.

Yes, corruption is obviously getting even worse within this Kenyan administration than within the last.  But that was also true when I lived in Kenya during the end of the first Kibaki administration and into the beginning of the second.

There are several readily apparent reasons.  For instance, when I lived in Kenya I made the acquaintance of a Western expat whose spouse was in the tourism business. Prior to the 2007 vote count corruption and violence, the tourism business was booming.  But corruption was up as a cost of doing business as it was explained to me because to operate you had to pay off a second generation, too–the kids of the senior politicians.  Presumably this generational expansion has continued.  Why wouldn’t it?

The year before I moved to Kenya the UK and US envoys had been outspokenly opposed to the corruption, in the context of the Anglo Leasing revelations by John Githongo of massive corruption involving national security procurements, touching our own security interests aside from our sensibilities about criminal behavior, along with the outrageous shenanigans involving the Artur Brothers, and the Standard media raid, among others.  The British envoy even offered the memorably colorful “vomit on our (the donors’) shoes” metaphor about the extent of the gluttonous “eating”.

But by the time I arrived in mid-2007 things were different.  New personnel led the diplomatic missions.  On the US side we apparently helped Moi and Kibaki get back together, and hosted Interior Minister John Michuki, of “rattling the snake” fame, who had taken credit for the Standard raid, on a security tour of the U.S.  Michuki represented Kibaki at our Embassy’s Fourth of July party, where Moi unofficially planted himself to catch the receiving line.

And then we looked the other way at the corruption of the Electoral Commission of Kenya.  Ambassador Ranneberger made sure to get his predecessor Ambassador Bellamy removed from our IRI Election Observation Mission on the basis that he was “perceived as anti-government”.  Bellamy had spoken out on the corruption, in particular the Standard raid.  The week before the vote, Ranneberger noted for the Kenyan public that Kenya was “on track” in fighting the vice of corruption, that  we had had Enron in the U.S., that prosecutions for Anglo Leasing and Goldenburg could take time, and that the World Bank had given the Kibaki administration an award for procurement reform (of all things) and that he expected a “free and fair” election.  And then we tried at first to sell the ECK’s election “count” even though we knew full well that it was bogus.  When that didn’t fly, we supported “power sharing” so long as there was no new election before Kibaki’s full second term was up.  According to a news report from Nairobi years later from stolen cables from “Wikileaks” we issued a couple of “travel bans” based on alleged evidence of bribery against two of the ECK commissioners, but we never disclosed this action or the evidence, why we singled out these two or anything else about the matter.

During the post election violence a diplomat explained to me that the reason many of the younger pols in Kibaki’s PNU coalition were against a power sharing settlement was that they didn’t want to share the secondary ministry appointments.  Ultimately by adding opposition politicians into the second Kibaki administration through “power sharing” with extra ministries you further expanded the multigenerational set of stomachs to let eat.  One way to look at the settlement naturally has been that Kibaki and Raila were willing to stop the fighting (so long as Kibaki retained with further ambiguity the full second term Presidency which the ECK had delivered to him) and the rest were bribed to acquiesce.

So you cannot tell me with a straight face that the diplomatic position of the United States in 2007-08 was to “oppose” corruption as a high rather than a subordinated priority.

After being stung by criticism from the election debacle, Ranneberger was reborn as an outspoken “reform agenda” campaigner for his extended tour on through the passage of a new constitution.  He compiled dossiers on money laundering and drug smuggling through politico/business interests and encouraged action, albeit to no avail. His successors quietly moved on, however, and we helped sell a new badly handled election in 2013 by a new, but probably more pervasively corrupted electoral authority.  We helped pay for expensive technology that was doomed by procurement fraud but kept quiet.  The British Serious Fraud Office successfully prosecuted one of their companies and its owners for bribes on other election procurements, but the Kenyan administration has taken no action to follow up and we have kept our silence.

With time, we have come again to affectionately embrace our usual suspect “partners”, with new programs headquartered in our favorite African city of Nairobi.  A photo op in the Oval Office with POTUS and FLOTUS for the Kenyan President and First Lady last year, followed this summer by a glowing official Presidential visit to Nairobi with a telegenic dance party at State House.   Never mind what we said before; please can we give you more?  Some eloquent speech about the cost of corruption, safely abstract from the burgeoning accumulation of years of specific cases on the impunity docket.  Yes we can dance with this new set of shoes without even looking down at the vomit.

Surely then it can be no surprise that things have gotten that much worse.  With a new report by Kenyan journalists on the longstanding implication of Kenyan Defense Forces which we help underwrite in Jubaland in the sugar and charcoal smuggling rackets, and fresh levels of embarrassment from the international press from the National Youth Service, irregular handling of bond proceeds amid rising debt levels, more land grabbing and another looted bank, all with a new election cycle approaching, the season has turned again and it is the time for furrowed brows.  Time for the U.S. to lead a donor group to call on the current version of the anti-corruption authority.  To talk again of “visa bans” and offers again to assist in “asset recovery”.

Instead of another remake, could this be a sequel offering a surprise ending, with say, even a few villains in jail, or at least less rich, as a cautionary tale for some and a bit of hope and inspiration for others? Or is this just another iteration of “the formula” in which the sheriff rides into town, frowns at the drunken brawl, then passes along to enjoy the cinematic scenery on the way home?

Only time will tell.  I do think we genuinely would prefer to be against the corruption rather than aligned with it.  We just lose our nerve and get distracted by other priorities that seem more immediate.  Making a dent in Kenya’s entrenched culture of impunity would take a long hard slog, in the face of bitter opposition formal and informal.  It would be messy and likely involve putting up with a bit of embarrassment–it could involve some risk and actual cost.  In any event  it would take a good while for us to convince the players that we had become serious.

An insider’s explanation of the difference between a “free and fair” election and a “will of the people” election–Kriegler deputy’s memoir

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Air Show

 

In his book Birth: the Conspiracy to Stop the ’94 Election, Peter Harris, a South African lawyer who was in charge of the “election-monitoring division” of that country’s Independent Electoral Commission in 1994 (under Johann Kriegler, later appointed by President Kibaki to head Kenya’s 2008 IREC or “Kriegler Commission”, charged under Kenya’s 2008 post-election settlement with, inter alia, investigating the failed presidential vote) elaborates:

“Why would anyone want to run a free and fair election that will remove them from power? . . . Enter the election-monitoring division, whose primary job is to ensure that the election is free and fair. . . .
What constitutes a free and fair is a major issue for us.  The high level of violence can have a major effect.  In short, the tense situation in Bophuthatswana can jeopardize everything.
Declaring an election free and fair depends on a number of considerations, but chief among them is the ‘freedom of voters to vote in secret, free from violence and coercion’, and ‘access to secure voting stations’.
Since his appointment, Steven Friedman and his information and analysis department have been monitoring the situation closely.  Their final talks will be to produce a report that will help the commissioners make a finding on whether the election was free and fair and a reflection of the will of the people.
I rather like the ‘will of the people’ bit; it reminds me of one of those classic legal catch-all clauses that provide an escape route if all else fails.  It is a bit like ‘sufficient consensus,’ that famous methodology for reaching agreement at constitutional negotiations.  In real terms this means if the ANC and the National Party agree there was ‘sufficient consensus’, then bugger the rest.  The real reason I like ‘the will of the people’ is because, as we hurtle closer to this election, it is clear to me that there is a lot that can, and probably will, go wrong.

Under Kenyan law under the 2010 Constitution, as in effect for the last election in 2013, this issue of potential circumlocution about election shortcomings is solved: the Constitution mandates a “free and fair” minimum standard.  I have written previously that I had picked up on discussion in Washington ahead of the 2013 Kenyan election harking back to the “will of the people” hedging language used by Westerners in reference to Moi’s re-elections in the 1990’s.

I ended up in an indirect disagreement through the pages of Africa in Fact magazine with the spokesmen for the Western government-funded election observation missions (the Carter Center from the US and the EU mission) about the significance of the conspicuous absence of reference to the higher (and legally mandated) standard in their Preliminary Statements following the voting.

The titular conspiracy that the Harris memoir discloses, but does not explain in detail, is that hackers penetrated the electoral commission ICT systems and changed vote tallies in progress.  And that the fraud was discovered by the embedded IFES (International Foundation for Electoral Systems) team funded by the U.S., addressed internally within the Electoral Commission and not disclosed at the time.

The hackers were adding votes for third parties apparently not to disrupt the ANC’s win, but rather to manipulate the overall percentage seemingly to avoid letting the ANC have the parliamentary margin to change the new constitution.

The South African Electoral Commission suspended the vote tally without explaining about the infiltration of the system.  A technology work around was created but the overall control system for handling the count broke down.  Through heroic logistical efforts, intricate private political negotiations and with the grace of fortunate “communications” efforts, the election process was “saved” to the extent of being accepted as a rough approximation of the “will of the people” in the context of moving from majority rule in an electorate of 22 million from the existing system of rule determined by competition among no more than a 3 million voter privileged minority.  Close enough for “horseshoes or hand grenades” as we say.  Close enough to an actual count of each individual’s vote for a “free and fair” election? Not so much.

In South Africa in 1994 there was an understood consensus that the purpose of the first broadly democratic election was to transfer power from the minority National Party the majority ANC while containing conflict from other factions “white” and “black”.  The time allocated and resources available made a free and fair election as such wholly beyond the potential of the endeavor.

Thus the situation in South Africa in 1994 was radically different than the electoral management task presented to the Kenya’s ECK and IEBC (and IFES) in 2007 and 2013.

In 2013 Judge Kriegler was back in Kenya some and was a frequent public commentor on contentious matters involving politics and the electoral commission.  It would seem easy to argue that his approach and expectations in Kenya leaned too heavily on the very dissimilar task he faced in his electoral commission experience in South Africa.