The story of Diana Kethi Kilonzo, the young woman who dared to replace her dead father in the Senate is a sad one; sad because having been duly nominated she ended up losing that nomination following an acrimonious petition at the IEBC.
I watched the saga being broadcast live on local TV. I was amazed at the obvious lapses that occurred during Kethi’s purported registration as a voter and later during the nomination.
What hit me earlier in the hearing was the fact that Kethi, being a renowned lawyer and daughter of a flamboyant lawyer and politician, never registered as a voter in Makueni where her father was contesting the Senate seat. Now if Kethi, the favourite daughter of her late father did not bother to vote for Mutula, who among the late Senator's immediate family supported him at the polls?
When Kethi chose to register as a voter, whether it was in 2013 or 2011, it was not to be in Makueni. She chose Lang'ata, far away from her father’s constituency. Why did she do this? Is there something that we Kenyans do not know about this great family?
When Kethi chose to register as a voter, she chose to use her passport which expired in 2001 and a copy of her national ID card. This is intriguing considering Kethi is not some illiterate village girl who doesn’t know the difference between a valid document and an invalid one.
As we watched this drama in my house, a friend made a valid remark that having held an expired passport for 12 years; does it mean that this great lawyer has never travelled outside our borders even to attend a professional conference?
Discrepancies in Kethi’s story aside, the case also exposed serious weaknesses in the IEBC. The IEBC that was disputing the validity of her registration is the same body that “fraudulently” registered her using an expired passport and a photo copy of her ID card.
Furthermore, the same IEBC officials cleared her when she presented herself at Makueni and gave her the nomination certificate to contest the Makueni senatorial seat.
With these glaring blunders, the electoral body cannot run away from its internal problems; problems that have come up again and again since the hearing of the presidential election petition. IEBC lapses must be dealt with now to avoid catastrophic consequences in the future.
What baffled many Kenyans was the fact that even though the IEBC was equally on trial for handling the “fraudulent” documents, it indeed sat on the judgment table and decided Kethi's fate when in fact all the documents presented as evidence were produced by the commission. Is it possible that in future, when the IEBC is implicated in a similar case, an independent tribunal be set up by the Supreme Court?
For Kethi, I think the ancestors of Makueni were not happy. It is too early to replace her father before his grave had settled. There are unfinished businesses with Mutula’s death. The post mortem results are still stuck in London.
When someone like Mutula dies, there are many things the family must do to ensure it is back on track. Rushing to replace him should not be a priority. More importantly, the family must sit down and soberly choose who, if any, to replace their father. This replacement should have waited until 2017 when either Mutula Jr or Kethi would be ready and organised enough to contest the seat.
The rush to replace Mutula has caused Kethi dearly and will most likely hurt the family for many years to come.
With the IEBC verdict, some malicious individuals may go to court to investigate Kethi and prefer criminal charges against her. If the courts uphold that indeed she breached the law during the nomination, she may face punitive measures from the Law Society of Kenya and possible prosecution by the Director of Public Prosecutions.
The Kethi case reminds me of a saying in my village that if you find a fox chasing a hen in the thicket, the first thing to do is to first chase the fox away. However, on arriving home, you must put the hen down and rebuke it for carelessly wandering in the bush, something which will one day cost it its life.
I know Kethi’s lawyers have appealed IEBC's verdict in the High Court. However, I can almost predict that the courts will uphold the verdict if recent past judgments are anything to go by.
Let us only hope that the whole saga will end here so that Kethi can be allowed to go on with her life.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment