By Jerry Okungu
Nairobi, Kenya
July 10, 2013
The story of Anne Kethi
Kilonzo, the one young lady who dared to replace his 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 Makuweni where
her father was contesting the senate seat. Now if Kethi, the favorite daughter
of his late father did not bother to vote for Mutula, who among the Mutula
immediate family bothered to support the
Senator at the polls?
When Kethi chose to
register as a voter, whether it was in 2013 or 2011, it was not to be in
Makuweni. She chose Langata, very far away from his 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 present her passport that expired in 2001
together with her copy of the national ID card. This is intriguing considering
that Kethi Kilonzo 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 fraternity.
The same IEBC that was disputing the validity of her registration as a voter 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 are the same people who cleared her when she presented herself at
Makuweni and gave her the nomination certificate to contest the Makuweni senate
seat.
With these glaring
blunders on the part of the IEBC, this electoral body cannot run away from its
internal problems; problems that have come up again and again since the Supreme
Court case of Uhuru Kenyatta Vs Raila Odinga earlier in the year. 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 judgment and decided the fate of Kethi
when in fact all the documents that were presented by Kethi were produced by
IEBC. Is it possible that in future, when IEBC is implicated in a case such as
this one, an independent tribunal be set up by the Supreme Court?
For Kethi Kalonzo, I think
the ancestors of Makuweni were not happy. It was too early to replace her
father before even the grave had settled. There were so many unfinished
businesses with Mutula’s death. The post mortem results are still stuck in
London and the country was still waiting for the results.
When someone like Mutula
dies, there are so many things that the family must do to ensure that the
family is back on track. Rushing to replace him should not be a priority. More
importantly, the family must sit down together 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 organized enough to contest the
seat.
Now the rush to replace Mutula
by Kethi has caused Kethi very dearly and most likely will hurt the family for
many years to come.
With the IEBC verdict,
some malicious individual 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 possibly prosecution from the Director of Public Prosecutions.
The Kethi Kilonzo 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 that carelessly
wondering in the bush will one day cost it its life.
I know Kethi’s lawyers
have vowed to appeal the verdict in the High Court. However, I can almost
predict that the courts will uphold the IEBC verdicts 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.
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