New House Speaker’s profile, journey to the coveted top seat

By Juma Kwayera 

KENYA: When newly elected National Assembly Speaker Justin Biden Muturi lost the Siakago parliamentary seat, he could have filed a petition in court to undo the outcome.

Instead, Muturi quickly put the loss behind him and moved on.

When The Standard reached him a day after the results were announced his response was startling.

“I lost the seat by 98 votes! However, life must go on. Politics is neither the alpha or omega of life,” he responded.

He showed the same disposition when he lost the seat to Lenny Kivutu in 2007.

He accepted defeat and went on a ‘sabbatical’.

Muturi belongs to a generation of lawyers, which in the mid-1990s when Kenya was coming to terms with changed political playing ground, opted for politics after the political space expanded in 1992.

At the time, he was Machakos Senior Resident Magistrate. He later resigned to vie for the Siakago seat in a by-election after it fell vacant following the death of incumbent Silas M’Njamiu Ita on a Kanu ticket. Although the party was despised for its tyrannical reign, it attracted a sizeable number of sharp minds that had served in the system.

Muturi stuck with Kanu up to 2012, when he and its chairman Uhuru Kenyatta quit to form The National Alliance (TNA).

He was Kanu national organising secretary, a position he was elevated to following the party’s dismal performance in the 2002 General Election.

Long service

Mr John Kahi, Muturi’s long time friend, describes him as sober and level-headed, a trait acquired from long service as magistrate in various parts of the country.

“His strength is in networking. He has striven to establish contacts in all parts of the country and has used them to good effect. In addition, he is a good legal mind, knowledgeable and composed. It is not easy to annoy him in a discussion, even when he knows he is right and his interlocutors wrong.”

“It is the tenacity in whatever he does that sees him through many challenges,” Kahi told The Standard.

He can also be cheeky and pesky. For instance, when serving as Kanu Chief Whip in the Ninth Parliament, he had penchant for rubbing the Narc Government the wrong way.

Before then Speaker Francis ole Kaparo ruled him out of order and forced him to apologise, Muturi had used un-parliamentary language when he refered to a move by the Government side as ‘stealing’. 

After losing the Siakago seat in 2007, he took time off his constituency to reflect on the debacle.

The ‘sabbatical’ allowed him to consolidate his position as a solid member of the Uhuru’s think-tank, moreso after he became chair of the Centre for Multiparty Democracy.