Monday, July 15, 2013

Only Kethi Kilonzo knows if she’s a registered voter

Updated Saturday, July 13th 2013 at 22:25 GMT +3


By Mugambi Nandi
The process of registering as a voter in Kenya is a complex one. It therefore did not surprise us that some learned friends might have been confounded by it. Legend has it that on an unknown date within the last two years, at an unknown voter registration centre located anywhere between Ngong and Karen (which we hear may now be a scene of crime), a well-known learned friend might or might not have presented herself for registration as a voter.
Equipped with unassailable identification documents, namely an expired passport and a photocopy of her national identity card, our learned friend was able to secure an acknowledgement slip as evidence of registration. To add icing to the cake, the slip came from no less a place than a booklet used to register only the then president of the country. We are reliably informed that this herculean feat has never before been achieved. This would explain the high esteem with which our heroic subject was held by her party and supporters, in nominating her as their candidate in a senatorial contest. 
Let us digress a little. The registration process requires an applicant to present herself before a registration officer, with proof of citizenship in the form of an original passport or a national identity card. The officer is supposed to satisfy himself as to the identity of the applicant and her eligibility for registration.  He is then supposed to enter her name, finger prints and photograph in a voters’ register, by means of some expensive equipment called Biometric Voter Registration system, whose functioning and cost are inversely related. Unlike the mythical book of life, the voters’ register is not one book. If your name is not in the green one, you are bound to find it in the black one.
Convinced that she was a registered voter, or persuaded that no one would find out that she was not - as the case may be - our subject decided to offer herself to her people as a candidate. Social media went aflame with support for her candidature. Her own people composed songs in her praise. Her party leaders reserved a seat for her in one of the crucial committees in Senate, ignoring the old adage about not counting your chicken before they are hatched.
No sooner had she been cleared to run than claims started emerging that her attempt at registration had been unsuccessful, an allegation the subject vehemently denied, with the loud support of her party leaders and supporters.
Meanwhile, the electoral commission responsible for the registration process not only pleaded ignorance and denied responsibility for the debacle, but went on to sit as judge on the matter. The voters have threatened not to participate in the by-election unless their candidate is on the ballot paper.
We have not been able to establish who said that politics is showbiz for the ugly, but that will not deter us from using the phrase. We suspect that the cue for Act II of the show is the word “injunction”. When all is said and nothing is done, Kethi Kilonzo knows whether she is a registered voter or not.
Last week, passengers on Kenya Airways Flight KQ117 were tormented by the architects of Western civilisation for making an unscheduled and unwelcome landing in Athens, Greece. It was reported that a fire alarm went off on the plane a few hours after take-off from Amsterdam. For the safety and (as airlines like us to believe) comfort of the passengers, the plane was diverted to the nearest airport, which happened to be Athens. Suspecting that the intruders might be a planeload of illegal immigrants, the Greeks spared no effort in securing them in a little room for many hours, under armed police supervision.
We were not on the ill-fated flight but through other sources we were able to learn a few popular Greek names like Papadopoulos, Dmitris, Charalampos, Konstantaras, Eleftherios and Kouvaritakis. We are practising how to pronounce them, just in case we too, through misfortune, find ourselves on those ancient and now bankrupt islands.
The feedback we received on our last article is that it boldly addressed the causes of traffic jams inKenya but miserably failed to provide a solution to the problem. After a week of research and meditation, we have come up with a solution, nay, solutions: first, burn the engineers responsible for the quality of our roads at the stake; second, publicly whip the offending, selfish drivers for their contumely; and third, establish an efficient public transport system, just like other civilised nations. Oh, and eternal damnation for matatus of all shapes, sizes and colour, whether they entertain their passengers with pornographic material or not, and whether they drop them at their actual destination or within walking distance of it.

No comments:

Post a Comment