The next day, given that Kalonzo’s Wiper party had joined the Azimio coalition party and deposited a document with the Registrar of Political Parties — with Raila as the joint presidential candidate — a reporter asked IEBC chief executive Hussein Marjan if Kalonzo’s solo run would have legal grounding under the circumstances.
Marjan said he didn’t know what Azimio was, so as long as the Wiper supremo met the requirements of the Elections Act in filing his papers with the commission, he would be cleared to run. I was gobsmacked.
The Office of the Registrar of Political Parties is established under the Political Parties Act, 2011 to provide the institutional, legal and regulatory framework for regulation and funding of political parties. Part of this role includes securing of pre-election deals within coalitions and between different parties.
Considering who the clients of the IEBC are, you would take it for granted that the ORPP is an organisation they consult regularly or whose input they need in ensuring credibility in the elections they conduct. Yet here was the CEO of the electoral commission practically declaring he didn’t care what agreements had been deposited with the ORPP.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission soon followed with a list of individuals it advised the IEBC not to clear to run in the August 9 polls, because they didn’t meet the requirements of Chapter Six of the Constitution on integrity.
The reply this time basically painted the IEBC as an institution dwelling on an alien planet, for they told the EACC that each agency should stick to its own work and stay in its own lane! The IEBC does not run any investigative, judicial or security branches, so in its daily operations, especially at election time, it has to rely on the police, the Judiciary and other statutory agencies charged with such duties.
To dismiss the EACC with a mere “do your job and let us do ours” is to be naïve beyond measure. One of the lines often quoted by the bosses at the electoral agency is that anyone with an ongoing court case or an appeal is innocent until found guilty. Fair enough.
However, around the same time that this IEBC-EACC drama was at its peak, Chief Justice Martha Koome was interviewed on a local radio station. She clarified that an ongoing appeal after a conviction does not actually set aside that conviction until the appeal is fully heard and determined. If this is true, on what basis did the IEBC clear Sirisia MP John Waluke to defend his seat?
Waluke has been convicted, even though he has an ongoing appeal. Interior CS Fred Matiang’i has rightfully warned that criminal gangs and the characters fancifully christened “wash wash” could soon overrun Kenya’s Parliament and become the new face of elective leadership in this country.
In a huge way, quick riches by all means have become a fad. Subsequently, proceeds of crime are being pumped into electoral processes as criminal networks attempt to seek protection and legitimacy through elective office. In the face of it, the country’s last line of defence, the IEBC, is crumbling like jelly and letting all of them in. In two more elections, at this rate, Parliament could become a theatre of the mafia.
QUESTIBABLE DEGREES
There is a part to all this madness that would be hilarious, if it wasn’t such a serious matter: Academic certificates.
To quote ODM secretary general Edwin Sifuna, “The motivation for going to school must remain to acquire knowledge. This recent phenomenon of people acquiring papers from backwater institutions we have never heard of just to fulfil requirements to vie for elective seats must be called what it is. It is fraud!”
At the time of writing this piece, the trending topic — complete with hilarious anecdotes — was about a gubernatorial candidate in a major county, whose questionable degree certificate had made it into public discourse.
The IEBC had cleared him to run. Before him, there was the court hearing where a former Highway School principal had stated categorically that Kapseret MP Oscar Sudi, who apparently flaunts a secondary school certificate from the institution, had never actually attended school there.
These cases could just be a tip of the iceberg. It is a long catalogue encompassing money laundering, corruption, fake academic certificates, theft and questionable characters all passing through the fingers of IEBC and going on to become honourable this and that.
But if you want to know how the Kenyan society functions, take the humble example of one kiosk that springs up on an illegal street. Usually, it stays there only a few days before 20 others come right next to it. The underlying message is that if one can get away with it, all of us can. And this is very predictably what we have become as a country.
I do not begrudge anyone their ability to get rich overnight, because like everyone else, I have a raging appetite for the soft life. Neither am I unduly worried about the ease with which a Kenyan can fly to a neighbouring country, enjoy the red-light district of that capital for a night and return to the motherland next day carrying a document that transforms him into an overnight scholar and philosopher.
What I cannot take is the IEBC looking the other way and allowing these characters to become national leaders and policy setters for 50 million people. Political parties and the entire electoral process are key to the socio-economic and political governance of the nation because they provide the platform for identification and selection of the leaders.
We cannot, therefore overstate the fact that the agency charged with conducting our elections, and paid handsomely for such troubles, has to do more to give the country leaders who deserve to actually lead it.
It is possible that the IEBC thinks this five-year cycle for them is merely a “touch and go” affair. But I shudder to imagine what this country’s leadership would look like, if we let the IEBC get away with not caring.
When the people with the fake degrees, the convicts, the money launderers, the corrupt and the merchants of the underworld finally gather in the House to conduct business, the same IEBC, rather than coming out to save our souls, will refer us to the same agencies whose advice they are refusing to listen to now. We are on our own.
(Edited by V. Graham)
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