Kenyan president steps down to face criminal court in The Hague

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta told the nation in an address before the Kenyan parliament on Monday that he would temporarily step down as president while attending a hearing at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague this week.

Kenyatta said he would invoke a never-before-used article of the constitution that will see Deputy President William Ruto temporarily fulfill the role of president.

That article says the deputy can fill in when the president is absent, temporarily incapacitated or during any other period the president decides.

Kenyatta faces charges of crimes against humanity before the ICC. Kenyatta is accused of inciting massive violence following the country's 2007 election. That violence – often ethnically motivated – killed more than 1,000 people and uprooted 600,000 others from their homes.

Deputy President Ruto faces similar charges and has attended hearings before while in office, Reuters reported.

The temporary abdication of the country's top political job is Kenyatta's way of fulfilling the court order that he attend, but insisting that he be a private citizen during the court hearing and not the first president to sit before the court.

In his Monday address, Kenyatta cited sovereignty as a reason for invoking the article, saying he did not want Kenyan citizens to be put on trial in another jurisdiction.

"Therefore let it not be said that I am attending the status conference as the president of Kenya," he said.

Kenyatta also criticized the international court for being biased.

"My accusers both domestic and foreign have painted a nefarious image of most African leaders as embodiments of corruption and impunity," he said.

"Nothing in my position or my deeds as president warrants my being in court," he said, adding that his conscience is clear.

“I expected the matter to be dropped for lack of evidence. Instead, the prosecutor asked for an extension and blamed the government of not co-operating," Kenyatta said, according to the newspaper Daily Nation.

If Kenyatta had refused to go, as some members of his political party have urged, he risked facing an international arrest warrant and of international condemnation or economic sanctions against Kenya.

Standard Digital News reported that leaders of the opposing Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) party called on its members to boycott Monday’s special hearing, saying that Kenyatta’s ICC hearing is not a state of the nation issue and that attending would be insensitive to the victims of the electoral violence.

Kenyatta has appeared before the court before but was not president at the time.

Al Jazeera and wire services