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في استطلاع رأي جديد غالبية الشعب الكيني تفضل المحكمة الجنائية الدولية على المحاكم المحلية
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Quote: NAIROBI, April 5 (Reuters) - Less than a quarter of Kenyans want a local court to try the masterminds of violence after disputed 2007 polls, despite a strong government push to have cases heard in Nairobi rather than The Hague, a survey showed.
Months of political and prayer rallies across the east African country by the violence suspects -- and an international charm offensive driven by President Mwai Kibaki that won African Union and Chinese backing -- have failed to convince at home.
The results of a March survey by pollster Synovate showed 24 percent of Kenyans were now in favour of a special local tribunal to hear the cases, down from 34 percent in December.
Sixty-one percent want the cases heard by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, up slightly from 60 percent in December, according to the survey.
"That tells me that within the last three months, notwithstanding all of the activity, there has been basically, statistically, no change whatsoever in Kenyan's position on this," said Tom Wolf, research consultant at Synovate.
Synovate said it surveyed 2,000 adults nationwide last week.
The prospect of post-election violence trials has struck fear into Kenya's political elite and intensified infighting within the fractured coalition cabinet.
Kibaki and his allies, who include key suspects, want local trials, while Prime Minister Raila Odinga backs the ICC.
ICC APPEARANCES
The survey was released on the day the six suspects were due to travel to The Hague ahead of initial appearances on Thursday and Friday to hear formally the accusations against them.
Key among the suspects are Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, son of Kenya's founding father Jomo Kenyatta, and William Ruto, the higher education minister who has been suspended to fight a corruption case.
The Synovate survey showed that Ruto was the most widely recognised among the six suspects, followed by Kenyatta.
Kenyatta and Ruto -- whose ethnic communities fought each other in the worst of the violence -- have criss-crossed Kenya to defend their innocence. They have also now joined forces in a nascent political alliance against Odinga.
"A rally is an opportunity to express your views, not to judge the support of the people," said Synovate's Wolf.
More than 1,200 people were killed and about 350,000 displaced by the violence which badly hurt east Africa's largest economy and its reputation for stability in a turbulent region.
The deadly fighting broke out after Kibaki's main challenger Odinga accused the incumbent of robbing him of victory in the late Dec. 2007 election.
A power-sharing deal brokered by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and signed by Kibaki and Odinga stopped the bloodshed and created Kenya's first coalition government.
The deal said those responsible for the violence would face justice, and the cases were eventually taken up by the ICC after lawmakers failed to set up a local tribunal. (Editing by David Clarke and Jeffrey Heller) |
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