Kenyan president to temporarily step down for ICC hearing

Uhuru Kenyetta made the announcement Monday during a speech in parliament.

|
Lucas Jackson/REUTERS
Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta addresses the 69th United Nations General Assembly at the UN headquarters in New York September 24, 2014.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta on Monday told the nation in an address before parliament that he would temporarily step down as president while attending a hearing at the International Criminal Court this week.

Kenyatta said he would invoke a never-before-used article of the constitution that will see Deputy President William Ruto temporarily fulfill the role of president. That article says the deputy can fill in when the president is absent, temporarily incapacitated or during any other period the president decides.

The temporary abdication of the country's top political job is Kenyatta's way of fulfilling the court order that he attend, but insisting that he be a private citizen during the court hearing and not the first president to sit before the court.

"It is for this reason that I chose not to put the sovereignty of more than 40 million Kenyans on trial since their democratic will should never be subject to another jurisidiction," Kenyatta siad.

"Therefore let it not be said that I am attending the status conference as the preisdent of Kenya," he continued. "Nothing in my position or my deeds as president warrants my being in court."

If Kenyatta had refused to go, as some members of his political party have urged, he risked facing an international arrest warrant and of international condemnation or economic sanctions against Kenya.

Kenyatta, Ruto and a Kenyan radio personality all face crimes against humanity charges before the ICC. The ICC's prosecutor has accused the three of inciting massive violence following the country's 2007 election. That violence — often ethnically motivated — killed more than 1,000 people and uprooted 600,000 from their homes.

Kenyatta has appeared before the court before but was not president at the time.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Kenyan president to temporarily step down for ICC hearing
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2014/1006/Kenyan-president-to-temporarily-step-down-for-ICC-hearing
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe