art, culture, politics & tech. trends: ICC Confirmation Hearings

Friday, October 14, 2011

ICC Confirmation Hearings

The ICC confirmation hearings taking place in the month of September as usual got most of the country glued to The Hague. The national discourse was ICC confirmation hearings and this was made possible by the media. The main TV stations NTV, KTN, K24 Citizen TV and K24 disrupted the normal programme schedule to broadcast the ICC confirmation hearings. The newspapers were a splash with what or what did not happen at The Hague and the radio was also full of the confirmation hearings

This spotlight of Hague was there despite some calamities taking place in Nairobi (pipeline explosion) and accidents taking place in the country.

However, for me this time round I watched the debate unfold on social media sites twitter however, during the evening I was able to watch a few of the first bunch of confirmation hearings which involved MP’s Ruto, Kosgey and Journalist Sang.

The second bunch of confirmation hearing attracted my attention because the Finance Minister was going to testify as his own witness and I looked forward to see the ‘battle royal’ as it had been called in the media between the prosecutor L. M. Ocampo and the Finance Minister. In fact Gado the Daily Nation cartoonist had painted Mr. Uhuru Kenyatta in gloves ready to ‘engage’ the prosecutor!

I missed this ‘confrontation’ because an event popped up that I had to attend at the iHub. Nevertheless, I was able to see a read and see what happened in the news. It had been billed as a risky move by the Finance Minister but going by what I observed and comments made by persons is that the gamble by Finance Minister paid off.

Observations

Finance Ministers counsel was damn good. During the initial appearance there was backlash on twitter as to why the Finance Minister was engaging the services of foreigners yet in Kenya we have good lawyers. However, during the confirmation hearing I was able to see the smart move taken by the Finance Minister.

There was a huge contingent of media personalities composed of all the anchors of stations in Kenya (worthwhile to mention Jeff Koinange of K24 who even had an exclusive with the prosecutor!) who went to The Hague.

There were PR practitioners for Mr. Uhuru and bloggers among his contingent.

From the court perspective, the presiding judge was tough and fair as usual. The witness lawyer was also very good.

Back Home

The week the finance minister was on the doc I noticed some graffiti on some walls showing solidarity with the finance minister. So what is unique with this graffiti is that it has the Obama hope signature in it. It is worthwhile to note that though I do not know who was behind it. This is definitely done by young people. This I think goes to show that the Finance Minister has some fanatical following in some quarters.