The question of amnesty irks me every time I hear the foul mouthed politicians utter it. Sure I am Christian and I do believe in forgiving, but even forgiveness comes with admition of sin. I’m angered when I hear purported leaders calling for the immediate release of suspects of the post election violence as though these people were arrested, on their way to buy bread from mama Kamau’s shop down the road. How can they speak with such a disregard of the atrocities that were committed? How can they speak with such disregard of the trials that thousands faced at the hands of these people?
Why didn’t these politicians who are now so big on blanket amnesty ‘forgive’ Kibaki on what they said was a stolen election? Or is it they have now seen the light (or is it the shine from their new state owned 4x4s)? Why did they continue to bay for justice to be done when they thought it was they who were wronged? Now that they are driving around in their big cars, and receiving their tax free salary every month they are suddenly ‘touched’ by the plight of those who killed in their name, those who raped in their name, those who stole in their name. I wish I could say that these politicians are that selfless but I cannot, not as a Kenyan with a fully functional mind. There is more to this call for amnesty than meets the eye (I will not be the one to speculate that the actions of these youth is what propelled a number of these amnesty ambassadors, into their plush leather seats, with electric heating (disregard the fact we live in the tropics.) These politicians care about Kenyans for only three reasons; to provide the statistics required to get donor funding or should I say pocket money (53% of Kenyans live below the poverty line, please help us we are poor), to give them a base number of votes to which they can apply their math skills (they haven’t discovered the trick of creating votes from nothing) and to faithfully pay them at the end of every month for their lack of service. Oh there is also the factor of the masses cheering them on as gods, but with their bloated egos or is it apparent ignorance they might even cheer themselves on despite being unpopular (a number of politicians last year kept saying how their people wanted them back but they strangely did not get any votes)
I remember a slogan, NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE!!! being chanted four months ago. Is granting amnesty to people who haven’t even asked for forgiveness JUSTICE? Is releasing one of those youth who killed a woman’s children justice? That she can always meet him on her way to the shops, and his very presence taunting her as to how much she has lost, adding insult to injury that her loss wasn’t enough to warrant justice, her loss wasn’t even enough to warrant an apology from his lips. That she, is not worthy to be a Kenyan citizen, as justice is guaranteed to every citizen.
Yet again I ask this question, if these ‘leaders’ are national leaders, why then do they still use terms as watu wetu? Aren’t the aggrieved people their people too? Or did these people deserve what befell them unlike those who have been detained?
Even in Rwanda where amnesty was given to SOME of the people who played a part in the genocide, they asked to be forgiven. They faced the families of those they killed, looked them in the eye and apologized. Why then should politicians in Kenya want anything less? Those who are saying that it is their children who have been arrested, is that to say that those who were killed belonged to no one?
If these politicians are so genuine about theirs calls for amnesty (genuine in that they believe this is true justice and that their ‘people’ have done nothing wrong) , I dare them to call out the survivors of the post election violence and in front of them, yell at the top of their lungs for their peoples’ amnesty. But this is only if they are genuine about their reasons for it. If not, they may as well continue to call for amnesty in their strongholds, where their mentally impoverished delusional sycophants will cheer them on even if these politicians chose to defecate into their mouths. That leaves the rest of who are Kenyans (those who it is okay to kill, rape, harm, steal from, etc) to only pray that somehow, justice will be done…
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