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"content": "something to the country. So, he said: “I am going away and Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the Minister for Interior, is going to act as President until I come back.” Of course, the Constitution of South Africa allowed that kind of a legal scenario. In our own Constitution, the President cannot bypass his Deputy even if he wanted to. Other than that, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I am only aware of the case of President Nixon in the United States of America (USA) decades ago, but it just does not happen. I think what the President did was a good thing. It democratizes our presidency, it demystifies our presidency; it builds confidence in future, going forward, that those people who want to be President should not just pick anybody to become their deputies for them and once they assume power just to ignore them. So, it is a very assuring thing. It also depersonalizes the State and the presidency so that the presidency becomes an institution and not an individual. So, for me, I see what happened as a celebration of our democracy and as something that we should be proud of because our democracy is getting stronger and stronger. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, much of the Presidential Address revisited the issue of the International Criminal Court (ICC). I am a very proud lawyer today because I remember that about four years ago, I appeared as counsel in the ICC representing His Excellency the Deputy President William Ruto. At that time, he was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Eldoret North. I think he had just been sacked as a Minister for Higher Education because of these issues about the ICC. I remember that the ICC Prosecutor had, in the preceding months, created an impression that he had insurmountable evidence to try the six Kenyans that he had identified or the people he had in mind. When we went to the ICC, it came out very clearly that the Prosecutor was involved in guesswork; he was engaged in a witch-hunt and he was involved in a publicity seeking spree. I remember we told Kenyans that as far as we are concerned, we do not think these cases could work because the only things he supplied us were the Waki Report, the Kenya National Human Rights Commission Report and a few other pamphlets written by Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). His strongest piece of evidence was the Waki Report and I remember at that time Sen. Wako, who is seating directly in front of me, was the Attorney-General of the Republic. I remember him telling Kenyans “Look, it would be impossible to prosecute and convict anybody on the basis of the Waki Report because the report itself says ‘look, this is not enough; we just need somebody to do investigations.’” So, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, when we started saying “look, this fellow called Moreno Ocampo is just a movie star” because he would come here, he gets all the trappings of power – and I hope Sen. Wako did not aid and abet that irresponsible conduct on our part. Of course, as a country, we want to entertain serious guests. Ocampo came here, then he went to the national park where he named a cheetah, he was photographed and then newspapers splashed his names in the headlines. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I want to quote from the President’s Speech what the Prosecutor herself has now said; because what happened when my friend, Moreno The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate"
}