The brief lull in the frenzied search for impunity afforded us by the end of year break is clearly over.

Parliament is about to reconvene. Although this period of the year usually finds it preoccupied with preparations for the annual budget, its priorities are pending Bills having to do with reforms of the criminal justice chain — police and judicial reforms in particular.

And Gitobu Imanyara has ready yet another Bill seeking to establish a Special Tribunal — a bill much weaker than his previous ones.

Cabinet, in the meantime, has not been sleeping on the job of protecting its own — and highly ranked bureaucrats.

The two principals, Cabinet and the rest of the Executive have managed to outrage the country (yet again) with suggestions that taxpayers foot the bill for any eventual defence costs of the six that the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is seeking summons for.

And worse, by committing to a diplomatic offensive across Africa.

The hope is obviously to get African state parties to the ICC to be able to create enough diplomatic pressure on the ICC that it steps down from its stance on complementarity.

It is hard to find the words to describe just how despicable and offensive the actions of Parliament and the Cabinet are.

Yes, it is true that we are happy that the pressure is on to conclude steps towards revitalising our criminal justice system.

We all want not just capable and efficient security services. We all want security services that are held to account for their actions — by both internal and external accountability mechanisms.

We all want a new Chief Justice. We all want the new separation between the offices of the Attorney General, as legal advisor to the government, and the Director of Public Prosecutions, as the person responsible for bring criminal cases to trial, to take effect.

We all want independent-minded and strong people in those three positions. We all want equally independent-minded people to sit on our Bench.

And we all know that any cases successfully prosecuted before the ICC will not bring justice to the entire range of victims and survivors of the post-election violence.

It has always been evident that we would need national prosecutions of some kind to accompany any ICC action.

On those points, we can all agree.

What we cannot agree to, however, is the blatant hypocrisy of the two principals, the Cabinet and parliament in respect of their sudden alacrity in moving all these reforms forward.

Grand-sounding declarations of sovereignty aside, we know that this alacrity has nothing to do with sovereignty.

Worse, it has nothing to do with the needs for justice of the victims and survivors of the post-election violence — they are as irrelevant to the thinking of the two principals, the Cabinet and parliament as they have always been. It has to do with political calculations.

To expect us to believe that Kenya has the will to investigate and charge those believed to bear the greatest responsibility for the crimes committed during the post-election violence is almost farcical — if it is was not so tragic.

Neither PNU nor ODM has any interest in trials at that level.

Both PNU and ODM have decided to do what the Kenyan state always does in the face of demands for accountability and an end to impunity — which is to throw reforms at us as a sop.

Much the way tired young mothers stick pacifiers in the mouths of babies to stop them from crying and screaming.

L. Muthoni Wanyeki is executive director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission