Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien last week admitted uttering the French swear word “merde!” in front of Queen Elizabeth back in 1982 at the signing ceremony of the Canadian Constitution Act.
Then Justice Minister Chretien was prompted to use the word when he sat to append his signature to the all- important document only to find that the tip of the pen had just been broken by then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. The Queen who sat nearby and who speaks French fluently burst out laughing, and, for years, everyone wondered what could have caused such a royal mirth. Well, now we know. Merde!
Now, I know Uganda’s minister for international relations Oryem Okello is a gentleman who could never swear in public, but I would forgive him, in fact, even applaud him for letting out a string of choice equivalent of “merde!” toward the unidentified “senior government official” of Sudan who wants Oryem’s head. The New Vision’s headline yesterday ran: “Sudan wants Oryem sacked”. Merde!
The problem is not what Minister Oryem’s did wrong, but rather President Bashir’s undoing. The Sudanese leader is currently sitting with the Sword of Damocles hanging over his head as an indicted war criminal. Charges against Omar Bashir were first laid in July 2008 by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Luis Moreno-Ocampo for crimes against humanity. Then in March this year, the ICC followed up by issuing an arrest warrant for “Omar Hassan Ahmad El Bashir, President of Sudan, for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
He is suspected of being criminally responsible, as an indirect (co-)perpetrator, for intentionally directing attacks against an important part of the civilian population of Darfur, Sudan, murdering, exterminating, raping, torturing and forcibly transferring large numbers of civilians, and pillaging their property.”
Now, President Bashir quickly brushed off the ICC arrest warrant as a mere inconvenience, an irritant that will not deter him from moving about world affairs as if nothing happened. The defiant Bashir went to Al Fashir, the capital of north Darfur, where he ceremoniously brandished a sword as if challenging the ICC to dare step on Sudanese soil if it was man enough.
He was further emboldened on July 3, in Sirte, Libya, when African Union member countries except Botswana duly signed a resolution calling on its members not to execute the ICC arrest warrant. But if President Bashir had any sense of dignity left in him, he should have realized that his peers were merely being symbolic, namely, appearing to be supporting an African brother in time of need.
Unfortunately, Bashir took the whole Sirte joke literally and, truly believed that he could go wherever he wanted without fear of being arrested. He was wrong. As the fiasco surrounding his impending visit to Kampala clearly demonstrated, AU members that are also signatories to the Rome Statute had no intention of betraying the ICC.
The thing that Bashir failed to appreciate at the time was that the ICC is not a man with whom one could have a sword fight. The ICC is the collective will of 108 (soon to be 109) world nations coming together to support the idea of international justice. In fact Sudan was one of the first nations to recognize the importance of the ICC when it signed the Rome Statute on September 8, 2000. But, after second thoughts, and just like the USA and Israel did, Sudan backed out by refusing to ratify it.
China, Russia, Pakistan and India have not signed the document at all. For the record, Uganda signed the Rome Statute on March 17, 1999 and fully ratified the document on June 14, 2002. And this was dutifully pointed out by state minister Okello Oryem who as a lawyer, understood that Uganda’s obligations to the ICC superseded the farcical document signed at Sirte.
Oryem’s real crime was in honestly pointing out the obvious that the emperor was naked—in this case that Bashir had no immunity from arrest should he set foot in Uganda. Understandably, and as a peer to another, President Museveni phoned Bashir to apologise about the misunderstanding.
While I am not privy to what Museveni said to Bashir, I can surmise that he consoled him with soothing words to the effect that the people of Uganda were not rejecting Bashir, the person. In the end though, that was all President Museveni could say in private. Even he, Museveni, could not turn around and publicly contradict his minister for doing his job. As I wrote in this column back in March, the time would come when Bashir would find it impossible to move outside of Sudan. In fact these were my exact words: “In time, Bashir will become the sick man of Africa, neither condemned by his peers nor welcome into their august circle, always avoided like the man with the don't-touch-me disease.”
That time is now. Bashir can do whatever he feels like doing, just so long as he does not do it in a member state that is signatory to the Rome Statute. That’s why, in my mind, the demand from the anonymous Sudanese official asking for Oryem’s resignation deserved some well-aimed choice word like merde!
