Nairobi — Since the International Criminal Court chief prosecutor is not a Kenyan, it is imperative that he receive some education on the thinking in official circles that turned his visit to the country into a roaring success this week.

First, he is very popular among the people who matter because he raises blood pressure, causes listlessness and maintains anxiety -- conditions necessary in leadership. Not too long ago, Kenya's cabinet sat and weighed the possibility of withdrawing its signature from the Treaty on the Rome Statute to limit Mr Luis Moreno-Ocampo's reasons for entry to tourism.

As effective as that appeared, with the possibility of earning some foreign exchange off him and his team, the idea was abandoned only for its tackiness.

The second strategy borrows heavily from how the Sudanese dealt with their own situation by reminding the UN and other busybodies of their sovereignty. They admired every printed request for information at length, consulted over it and talked endlessly until the cows came home.

Kenya has been promising to set up a local special tribunal to try those who sponsored and committed the most serious crimes after the 2007 elections. It is only by accident that the agreement to create laws to set up the special tribunal was rushed, flawed and therefore impossible for Parliament to pass.

It is only by coincidence that the cabinet refused to support revised bills to set up these courts later. It is only unintentional that two cabinet ministers and the attorney-general signed a private agreement with the chief prosecutor that Kenya would refer itself to the ICC by September if there was no progress on justice for the victims and yet failed to do so.

If Mr Moreno-Ocampo signed that agreement with people not authorised to commit the Government, he cannot blame Kenya, those officials or even himself. Obviously, Mr Moreno-Ocampo is unwilling to let bygones be bygones -- yet he did not even lose a cow in the post-election violence. As a result, he must be prepared for some government hardball, no hard feelings.

Mr Moreno-Ocampo has not brought with him a list of the suspects he intends to arrest. He has not assured Kenya that this list does not have the name of the president, that of the prime minister or those of people who can implicate them -- but he still needs cooperation.

If all those people could lose lives because someone was sworn in as president and not another, imagine the loss the country would suffer if an important Kenyan leader were to be carted off to a cold jail in The Hague! Since the people Mr Moreno-Ocampo is after are the state's very lifeblood, arresting them would threaten the nation's very existence. There would be wailing in the streets, rioting and violence.

Take the president's case, for example. If one were to go by rumours doing the rounds on the post-poll chaos, one would be tempted to suspect the president. There are claims that meetings to plan some of the attacks took place at State House. Thus, it's time Mr Moreno-Ocampo appreciated the fact that Mr Mwai Kibaki is not a State House security guard. If meetings took place there, what did he have to do with them? He is only paid to sleep at the address, nothing more.

On the flip side, the PM has insisted that violence in many areas was a spontaneous reaction to the rigging of the elections. So spontaneous that people dressed in uniform boarded lorries and travelled many kilometres to perform spontaneous murder, arson and rape. PM Raila Odinga was not there, seeing that he was in Nairobi chewing words with the Electoral Commission and its supporters for stealing his presidency.

If Mr Moreno-Ocampo does not want to accept these reasonable and logical explanations -- each of which the suspects will provide -- there is more hardball coming, and it could get personal and nasty. As we speak, the ICC chief prosecutor has only two years to complete his nine-year term. Instead of busying himself with people like Jean-Pierre Bemba, who is in custody, as well as Joseph Kony and Omar el-Bashir, who are still at large, he wants to disturb Kenya when it has made peace and is preparing to hold fresh elections in 2012.

Kenya cannot just sit back and watch; it will stand forward and shut its eyes in readiness for battle royale with this Ocampo man. As a member of the Assembly of State Parties, Kenya can initiate action that could threaten Mr Moreno-Ocampo's future. It could apply for his removal as ICC chief prosecutor.

So far, Kenya has caused UN Special rapporteur Philip Alston untold grief by flexing its diplomatic muscles. Imagine the imagination it could marshal to fix a prosecutor who touches on so many raw political nerves. Kenya could also take the softly-softly approach by asking the UN, being committed to peace and stability, to ask its Security Council to suspend any case for a renewable 12-month period.

That would be December 2010, and then another suspension, and we'd be in December 2011. By that time, Mr Moreno-Ocampo would be retiring and a new chief prosecutor would be asking where Kenya is -- in Russian. Kenya's leadership can see the US pouting, ready to lecture the country about cooperating with the ICC. Kenya could start by telling the US to go sign the treaty for the adoption of the Rome Statute first before lecturing anybody.