Two years after the violence that devastated Kenya, the country shuffles forward on a razor’s edge. Very soon, the International Criminal Court will decide whether to allow prosecutors to open investigations in to those believed to be responsible for mass expulsions and killings following a controversial election.

This occurs parallel to the uncoordinated political agenda we see today from Kenya, stifling continued investment and hindering Kenya from moving on. Instead of focusing on the real issues, politicians in the region are collating their public relations teams and preparing their respective campaigns for the upcoming 2012 election. How it will end any differently is anyone’s guess.

This year should be one of effective constitutional reform, not an atrocious repeat. Below, Gladwell Otieno from the Africa Centre for Open Governance argues that politicians in Kenya today are merely going through the motions of reform, all while ‘avoiding accountability for the disasters they have repeatedly visited on the country’.

Commissions of inquiry reported on the violence and the elections. The Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission is gearing up an an interim electoral commission has replaced a discredited old one. Leading politicians, who have reason to believe their names are on it, are very worried as they contemplate the possibility of being held to account. Their increasingly desperate and erratic stratagems have careened from intense horse-trading in parliament to sabotaging the local tribunal, to trying to stop the looming prospect of ICC engagement.

Intimidation of political witnesses proceeds apace, with at least two killed so far. The state, whose security agents were implicated in the violence, has offered no protection to potential witnesses. Civil society, with donor support, has had to step in.

…Thousands wary of Kenya’s history of impunity for large-scale crimes committed in the pursuit of power and its lucrative benefits are voting with their feet, moving their families and investents away from contested areas in fear of the fires of ‘next time’.