Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Spoiling the party, BBC style

Just when we thought we were out of the woods, a huge animal emerged from the undergrowth, red in tooth and claw, with a roar. 'State sanctioned Kenyan clashes'. A closer look showed that the animal was familiar, the BBC itself.

The Kenyan parliament is reopening on Thursday. A committee established under the Annan deal has been set up to investigate the clashes. Previously, there have been allegations mainly from the govt side, that ODM planned and sponsored violence after the disputed Dec 27 election. They even went as far as threatening to take ODM officials to the Hague, forgetting that the ICC is used only when a country's justice system is irretrievably broken down or too biased to be trusted. It was instructive that the very same fellas screaming Hague had been shouting that ODM was free to go to court to contest the election results. Inadvertently, the govt was admitting something about its courts.

Back to the Beeb, the militia that is mentioned in the story actually had the audacity to stage a demonstration in Nairobi today. Either the police were aware that such a large group (hundreds actually) was going to stage a demo and allowed them to, or they were too incompetent to get the intelligence report.

I wonder which is worse.

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