NEITHER ENEMY NOR FRIEND OF THE SUPREME COURT
Dear
CJ Willy Mutunga!
This
will disappoint you but the truth is that I am not a learned friend. If I were
a learned friend, I would wait for your ruling to question the legal bases of
your ruling. Being a simple Kenyan who is tired of being referred to us Wanjiku;
I want to know why you upheld the Wanjiku Tyranny? In asking these questions
dear CJ, just like you recently tweeted, I am neither a friend nor enemy of the
Supreme Court.
In
5 minutes, and with a dismissive tone, you brushed aside all our hopes for a
truthful moment. We did not care that the ruling goes either way, we cared more
that the basis of the ruling be sound enough as to give us reason to believe
there is an institution we can count on. Currently,
we are not very sure whether the Supreme Court has the interest of Nafula, Muthini,
Atieno and Fatuma at heart. It is possible that you had the interests of
Wanjiku at heart but did the interests of Wanjiku necessarily mean the interests
of Anyango being sacrificed at the altar of judicial expediency? Your ruling
was final and it legitimised the Uhuruto Presidency but so that this presidency
gains popular legitimacy, please address yourself to the following concerns as
you prepare your detailed ruling.
a. TECHINICALITIES VS. SUBSTANCE:
You
dismissed AFRICOGs application for the principal register, CORD’s affidavit and
CORD’s application for an audit of the electronic voting system on a
technicality basis. Will the technicality dismissal suffice as finally or will
you provide direction as to how substantive issues raised in relation to the
above mentioned are to be addressed?
b. CONDUCT OF THE IEBC
Dear
Lord (I fringe as I call you Lord), in your dismissal of applications on the
basis of there being no time you did well to keep within set timelines. Good
enough, but you notice there is more than just timelines in quest for justice.
I hope it does not escape your scrutiny that IEBC was adversarial rather than
facilitative of justice. During the tallying process, it did not escape to the
public eye that Oswago seemed too busy to be seen anywhere. The IEBC chair
seemed dismissive from my subjective vantage point. There were claims of some
agents being thrown out and the institution refusing to respond to questions. Immediately after announcing the results, they
went ballistic to the extent of branding petitioners as sour losers. They did
not willingly provide requested documents and insisted that we needed to accept
and move on rather than remaining independent arbitrators. Will your ruling
address itself to the failings of IEBC?
c. CONDUCT OF LEARNED FRIENDS
I
was dismayed to watch one strong lynch man in the name of learned friend
Ahmednasir not only cajole but demean the person of one Raila Odinga. I heard
him describe the Supreme Court as crawling and his effort to portray Raila as a
sour looser just baffled. Would you help me understand whether it is just for
learned friends to come before your court and act so selfishly? How would you
allow such men to rub salt into wounds like the shambolic 1997 elections, the
blatantly stolen 2007 elections? I wonder what it would have been like if
petitioners tried to show the government link between those who stole elections
in 2007 and those who may have facilitated acceptable anomalies in the 2013
election? I hope you give direction in terms of whether such like derogatory
descriptions of our leaders under the glare of cameras shall be condoned in the
highest judicial office
d. REJECTED VOTES
When you
admitted the AG, everyone knew you had admitted an Amicus Uhuru. He did not
disappoint because interestingly, there was a petition already to inform the
arguments of this great Amicus. While their arguments did hold water, I just
hope your ruling will not be based on idea of rejected votes not being counted.
This is the only petition you upheld and I am of the opinion, it may just have
been the justifying principle for the unanimous vote. Going forward, would you
give direction on the high number of rejected votes and whether having the
presidential and parliamentary vote on the same day makes sense?
e. ANOMALIES
To the small
mind of not so learned friends like me and Nafula and Anyango, there were
enough anomalies in the registration, voting process and tallying process. The submission
in the courts showed that there were just too many registers that the IEBC
could rely on. We had of valid register, principal register, green books, special
register etc. What is your definitive say on the issue of registers and IEBC
handling of registers?
There seems to
have been discrepancies between figures announced at polling stations and
figures accepted by the presidential returning officer? How did you resolve these
discrepancies as to declare the election as having been free and fair despite
the anomalies? Did your “Suo Moto” re-tallying not raise enough questions than
answers? Why did you go for arguments that explain anomalies away rather than
the questions that bring integrity into focus?
Should you have
found the anomalies as not substantial enough, would the votes lost due to
errors of commission or omission been enough to trigger a run off? Therefore,
going into the future, should IEBC be allowed to round off numbers by addition
and subtraction (human errors by young clerks according to Ngatia) since this
can be justified by the margin between leader and runners up?
f. SANCTITY OF THE VOTE
In your final ruling,
Supreme Court Lords, help us understand whether it matters that a Kenyan votes
or not. In 2007, Kenyans voted in droves and institutional failure ensured that
hypocritically, we can not know who won. In 2013, we voted and while it is
clear that a clear mandate was manipulated, again your jurisprudence will
justify a given regime. My question would be, between Fatuma, Muthini, Nafula,
Atieno and Wanjiku, whose vote holds more sway over the other? If you should
accept that each vote is the sacred will of a Kenyan, where is the justice in
the doctrine of substantial irregularity that many may be so willing to propound?
Your ruling legitimized the jubilee government; however, did the votes
legitimize this government?
Pertinent questions!
ReplyDeletemaswala nyeti... and i believe they will cook the ruling going by the tone and substance of the judgment!!
ReplyDeleteThanks Edwin Kiama and Khamadi. Let us wait for the rulling
ReplyDeleteGideon; going by the recent trends even hatespeech redifined. No one can speak against Kyuks anymore...We joke about Maasai's turkana, Kales even call Luos by foreskin but that does not amount to hatespeech. But a simple school drama replicating the actual kyuk nepotisim has been banned for hatespeech. hehehehhehee even talking about bangled election will soon be described as such..
DeleteValid observation Amza, the challenge in the fight against hate speech in Kenya is its ethnicization and politicization
Delete