POST ELECTION VIOLENCE: THE YOUTH ARE VICTIMS OF POLITICAL SHENANIGANS

POST ELECTION VIOLENCE: THE YOUTH ARE VICTIMS OF POLITICAL SHENANIGANS
The politics that has manned the “Amnesty for the youth” debate is getting nasty on a daily basis and the momentum it has gained clearly reveals the nature and the nurture of our political class. One wonders whether both parties from the political divide: PNU and ODM have a genuine concern about these youths or whether their portrayed positions are formed and informed by their respective hidden political mission and vision.
To the extreme, this debate seemed to have posed a brittle fodder for departure and delinquent breakdown of the much touted Grand Coalition. Thanks to the Budget reading, the plane crash that claimed our two law makers, the by- election and the launch of the vision 2030 by the president; for they temporarily shifted the nations focus away from the much heated Amnesty debate.
As it was, it seemed that there had been no genuine concern to push for or against the amnesty for these youths. The initial signs have shown that the political class is concerned at the moment about 2012 more than any other thing. And as much they may deny this, they know well that the fate of those youth and the position they take now upon it may be of benefit or detriment to them come next general election.
The other day, the debate took a literary angle, when the Prime Minister, His Excellency Raila Amolo Odinga wrote an article in the same page with the Constitutional Affairs Minister Hon. Martha Karua in one of our local dailies on the topic of the amnesty for the Youths. Reading both articles, it was crystal clear that the two are actually reading from a different script. The latter took a legal angle, while the former opted to what may be classified under a moral angle. Surprisingly, all the arguments they put forward makes sense to Kenyans but derive a divided support depending on the political ridge upon which you lean.
The truth is that there more to what our eyes can see and ears can hear. Each group seems to be out to impress certain quarters of their communities or core supporters, a ceiling whose limits equates to an act of trade where the medium of exchange in this case remain the very youth whose fate not only hung unknown behind the bars but also thorny beyond entrustment unto the hands and terrain of our judicial system.
Awkwardly, Kenyans on the other hand have been dragged into this debate via a wrong route of perception and worse still drugged to believe that it is the youth who needs the amnesty more than any other person in this country. The gullible citizen have been made to believe that the youth who brought "sorrow" to this nation must be punished and that once this is done we, as a nation would have exercised justice. For those who take this deep debate on this shallow face value should note that this is a serious misgiving that should not blindfold our eyes as a nation. The political class has used such kind of tricks for so long to absolve themselves from all forms of accountabilities. In fact, at minimum, the sole intention of any political class in directing and distorting such contentious national debate is to end up hiding their own role.
The Youth are alleged to have committed a rainbow of crimes including but not limited to rape, destruction of properties, burnings, killings and looting. This clusters them as perpetrators but leaves vacant the names and whereabouts of the real architectures, facilitators, financers, planners and beneficiaries of such crime.
A report by Kenya National Human Rights Commission, A government’s own agency indicates that the violence were planned long time ago even before the Election. An equal report done by The Youth Agenda and named “Who Is Guilty?” launched late last month on Pre- Election violence has equal verdict; that the youth were just but the tail and not the head in the violence. The financiers were the old, those in leadership or a combination of both.
Unconfirmed reports also indicates that young men were being trained for war, in preparedness for the second phase of serious battle, were the Kofi Annan led talks hit a deadlock or fails. Further allegation has it that the young people who caused mayhem in Nakuru and Naivasha were transported there from Nairobi and other parts of the country. If this is what to go by, then it is a common knowledge that these young men were acting on behalf and for the benefit of the big and the mighty.
Rwanda case is a good example, while the people who caused mayhem or perpetrated the crimes against humanity, were hunted and apprehended those who are thought to have planned or financed the genocide are still being sought; a good example is one Felicen Kabuga who is still on the run over the genocide. Our own post election violence in Kenya may not compare to the Rwandan genocide but where are our Kabuga’s? And why are they still free if they are not on the run?
Kenyans need to be told why some of our legislators and prominent persons were issued with a visa ban by some western countries on the cases and at the epic of the Election violence? Could the ban have been related to their role in the violence?
The Amnesty Debate has been squeezed to sound as a favor for the youth but the reality is that those in power today, those sharing the same power and those in PNU and ODM today, deserve the Amnesty more than the youth. And if they are above it, so why not the youth?
The other side of the coin may display the accused youth as someone who need a payback more than the amnesty, deserving a reward and not a condemnation. After all, it can be argued that they protected our national democracy when those who are less interested about it wanted to deform it with impunity. They gave hope to the power of our vote. And they stood firm to say that we cannot lose our democratic gains that we painfully earned as a nation for the greed of the power hungry leaders. The youth and fear of their actions produced the grand coalition and brought the two leaders namely Raila and Kibaki to a serious negotiating table.
Amnesty or no amnesty, the following must prevail: fairness and justice must and should not only be spoken to or applied in favor of the few select or to the detriment of many arrested; The hand of law should not only be long when it comes to the arrest and accountability of the weak and the least and finally we have to learn to rise above our national crises devoid of political inclination.
Yours faithfully

Signed
OULU GPO
P.O Box 4598-00200
NAIROBI