A vocal Jubilee politician from Mt Kenya region has bluntly told the opposition that it misunderstood a statement issued by envoys yesterday.
Gatundu South MP told Raila Odinga that a call by envoys for him to recognize President Uhuru Kenyatta as the legitimate President had an ICC undertone.
According to Kuria, the talk by the 11 envoys was a “diplomatic speak” asking Raila to get ready for ICC.
“I don’t think Raila and his NASA sisters understood the statement from foreign envoys. It was a diplospeak (sic) version of asking them to be ready for the ICC,” the MP wrote on his facebook page Sunday.
“It was a thinly veiled way of telling them they will be treated as war criminals,” added Kuria.
Yesterday, a joint statement by 11 foreign envoys read that the only way for Kenya to move forward is if Raila recognizes the legitimacy of President Uhuru and his Deputy William Ruto.
“The Opposition needs to accept this as the basis for the dialogue that it and many Kenyans want,” read part of the statement as quoted by the Star.
Robert F. Godec (Ambassador of the United States), Nic Hailey (High Commissioner for the United Kingdom), Jutta Frasch (Ambassador of Germany), Alison Chartres (High Commissioner for Australia), Sara Hradecky (High Commissioner for Canada) signed the statement.
Others are: Mette Knudsen (High Commissioner for Denmark), Anna Jardfelt (Ambassador of Sweden), Victor Conrad Rønneberg (Ambassador of Norway), Frans Makken (Ambassador of Netherlands), Tarja Fernández (Ambassador of Finland) and Kim Ramoneda (Chargé d’Affaires a.i., France).
Raila has severally repeated that he cannot and will never recognize Uhuru as the President because the polls were rigged in his favour.
In a rejoinder, Raila said the envoys can only be observers in Kenya. “We want to tell them that Kenya is an independent country and they can only be observers.
“We do not need advice from Godec and British High commissioner… We are independent and we will deal with our matters as Kenyans,” Raila said.
He went on to state the concern by the envoys was hypocritical.
“Those envoys are hypocrites, stop interfering with our business in a colonial way, we will not accept to be colonised again.”
Kuria noted that this time round, they will welcome the ICC investigators with open arms.
“This time we will welcome the ICC with a 21 gun salute and allocate them a whole floor at KICC for processing documents.”