It’s hard to drag an elephant into a room. But once there, it’s surprisingly easy to ignore. Such was the case during Kenya’s presidential campaign, which concluded this week. After a series of galling technical mishaps, the latest vote count delivered the presidency to deputy prime minister Uhuru Kenyatta and his running mate, William Ruto. The elephant of course, is the fact that both are under indictment by the International Criminal Court, accused of inciting, organizing and funding ethnically motivated violence against political rivals—or as these actions are otherwise known, crimes against humanity.

Ironically enough, Kenyatta and Ruto's trials evolved from a gruesome spate of violence during Kenya’s last elections, in 2007. After a tense campaign between incumbent president Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga, the tally was announced and Kibaki immediately sworn in. It was the last thing many voters saw; minutes later, the televisions went black. The ensuing indignation of Odinga supporters—which at the time included Ruto’s support base—quickly escalated into a campaign of violent reprisals, placing poor Kenyans on farms and in slums alike at the center of pent-up tribal grievance. After six weeks of chaos, global diplomats intervened, and Odinga was declared runner up and prime minister. Twelve hundred people were dead, and over 350,000 were displaced.

Two years later, Kenyan courts had barely begun to address the matter of justice for those killed or ruined by the clash. Into the breach came Luis Moreno Ocampo, the Argentine chief prosecutor of the ICC, wielding a clause in the Rome Statute that permits him to initiate proceedings (in other situations, the countries themselves refer the cases). After gathering witnesses and evidence, he brought charges against six Kenyans, including Kenyatta and Ruto. Until a last-minute intervention pushed Kenyatta’s date in court to July, their trial was to begin in April.

When I lived in Kenya from 2010 to 2012, the topic of the “Ocampo Six” was hot news. Whether the freshness of the violence in memory, the shame at the scale of the disruption or a new belief in accountability triggered by the constitution ratified in 2010, the mood was at least supportive of the ICC’s mandate. Tee-shirts reading “No Impunity”—referring to the Six—were edgy, but everywhere. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights produced the report that helped inform the ICC case. In October 2010, 68 percent of the country favored a process to bring any wrongdoers to justice. Even in the Rift Valley and Central Provinces that form the heart for Ruto and Kenyatta’s coalition, surveys put support for the ICC process at 73 and 61 percent, respectively. In January 2012, Justice Minister Mutula Kilonzo said “a ruling by the ICC is equal to a ruling by a Kenyan court by virtue of ratification of Rome Statute. You play with that ruling at your own peril.”

The statement has the tainted virtue of being half-true. While Kilonzo is right on the law, he is wrong on the politics. As Kenyatta, the 52-year-old son of the nation’s first president, mounted his campaign, he also mounted an assault on the Court’s legitimacy. He framed the prosecutions not as justice, but as western menace. (Ironically enough, he did so with the help of a UK-based public relations firm. ) “I am not saying that international justice doesn’t have a purpose,” he said in a combative interview with Al Jazeera. “But if Kenyans do vote for us, it will mean that Kenyans themselves have questioned the process that has landed us at the International Criminal Court.”