Editor, RE: “Busingye: Fugitive genocide convicts not bonafide litigants” (The New Times, November 16). When the law allows itself to be used as a tool of the lawless, it relinquishes its legitimacy and majesty; it ceases to be the law. Unfortunately, in the hands of lawyers and without constant oversight and input from an engaged citizenry to keep it real and fit for purpose, that is what the law inevitably becomes; a plaything of the silver-tongued professional sharpies rather than a means of fair and non-violent adjudication of conflicts. It is therefore not surprising that, left to their own devices, the lawyers that run this pan-African court would convert it to a lawyers’ dream plaything. A continuous engagement of member states is necessary for the court and its officers and advocates to be in no doubt for whom the institution was established; and it wasn’t for the lawyers. Mwene Kalinda
