The Ruling of Kenya Supreme Court

[kamalet]

The Supreme Court of Kenya has today ruled by majority to invalidate the election of Uhuru Kenyatta as president of the republic of Kenya.

When the results were announced, many people both locally and internationally urged the losers to respect the will of Kenyans and if dissatisfied they should they should look to the courts for remedy. Kenyans were treated to all manner of accusation on the independence of the court as well as a pronouncement that the losers will not be going to court. The decision to take the court route was only taken a lot later (and we can speculate on the reasons) after the excuse given that the decision was premised on the action on some errant 'big mouth' NGOs.

Without the benefit of the full reasoning (or even a teasers!) of the majority the only pointers that we have are the high-level reasons of dissent by justices Ndung'u and Ojwang'. The two argue on the respect of the will of the people as enshrined in the constitution so it will be interesting how the majority will navigate this one.

But having said this, as a Kenyan and I call on all others to do it, we MUST respect the decision of the court however much we want to disagree with it. I commend President Kenyatta for doing exactly this when he announced that whilst he personally disagrees with the decision, he fully respects it. Being critical of the decision should be on an informed basis! I think the reception of the decision by the Kenyatta supporters has been commendable as it was generally expected that a contrary decision would have precipitated quite some trouble. We do not have that so let us all be thankful.

Moving on, we shall have an election before 1st November 2017. So how will Kenyans behave on that election day?

When discussing this matter with others and on this forum I argued that Raila used the court route to redeem himself and a loss in this court would have been the perfect way of going out of politics with someone else holding the baggage of loss and not him. Now in the repeat elections, there are several changes in how it will be run. First the campaigns of both leaders will be boosted by other elected officials who who had no time for the presidential election hence can devote time to campaign for their candidate. There are MCAs, MPs, Senators and Governors who will be available in the grass roots which means Uhuru and Ruto do not have to run intensive campaigns to shore up their own and the local leaders campaigns. They have all hands on deck and Raila can also claim this additional hand. The second issue will be losers in opposition wanting to settle scores with those that rigged them out and also others who might want to be rewarded with some plum government post if the support a candidate.

What is not changing (and there is no evidence in court to the contrary) is that there were nearly 14 million voters and their respective support (8m vs 5m) will be the starting point of the next election. Who will be more motivated than the other to go back and queue to vote on that day? Will their be people voting in anger? I suspect the angry ones will be the 5 and 8 million voters who their varied reasons will want to seal the vote. Then you have another 5 or so million that did not bother to go to the ballot box. How will these vote and where do they come from to enable good political demographics to emerge?

We are all headed for interesting times and if Raila loses this election, it will be one that he will struggle to justify theft. Rope to hang himself? Only time will tell!

[jakaswanga]

Kamalet,

I always held the view the court case was a pantomime show from the ruling class, an intra-class parley to perpetuate the joint looting while managing public anger.

Why? Raila had in deed publicly acknowledged he wouldn't go to the courts; the mercenary international community had given the election a clean bill of health; what remained was a behind the scenes MKATE DEAL. It would be less than NUSU for the losers, but still substantial enough to buy their complicity. Kalo but especially Aguash would then be allowed to make the appropriate decibels to calm down their agitated grassroots, and once this bitterly loosing ticket had lulled their sheep to sleep, the rewards would be apportioned behind the scenes. As for Mudavadi and Weta? Ach, they don't really count.

That was the business as usual scenario, Kenya passing the democratic test, @african standards which, striking some of us with horror and evoking seething rage, are always set below the least minimum. It is pre-historic fatalism.

Howbeit fate threw a spanner in the works. Some independent organisations, say NGO's, were going to court anyway. As is their constitutional right. And Maraga had said, my doors are open, we are game!

This independent development explains the sudden burst of the Matiang'i bubble. –---State security agents under his watch as he stood in for Nkaissery's corpse, 'watergated' the relevant NGO offices, stealing documents and destroying hard-drives. There was even the idiotic excess of one, him Fazul of the NGO regulating board, de-registering and freezing the accounts of the activist organisations.

Makau Mutua as an enemy of the people! --Yawa! John Githong'o as a horribilis maximusto the people! Mayie mama! I am for divorce yawa! there are animal depths to which when a people sink, they should be let be!

I amongst others looked at Fred Matiang'i and thought, God WTF Forbid! Dr. Matiang'i, once of education, once a dean at the prestigious Nairobi campus, is signinff off Sunny Buffallo Dr. Makau Mutua is Al-shabaab! It was insane. I seethed with contempt, and declared this Freddo bagga had undergone a lobotomy, where the matters in his head were reduced to the porridge inside a sheep's nose!

The illustrious list ofMakau Mutua, Maina Kiai, John Githong'o, Gladwell Otieno, Wanyeki Muthoni ... has its faults no doubt, but for a man from the education ministry to bandy these Kenyans together with al-Shabaab, is a crime against thought! That is a man whose karma is beckoning!

Stung by the repudiation of all Kenyan renaissance opinion, the gun-ho sheriff retreated tactically. Here is a reminder

By MACHARIA GAITHO

Acting Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiangi’s intervention may have suspended de-registration of the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) and Africa Centre for Open Governance (Africog), but it is likely to be only a temporary reprieve for key civil society bodies that have been on the government’s radar for quite a while.
Dr Matiang’i acted following widespread condemnation of the move to halt activities of the two organisations that have, for many years, been at the forefront of democratisation, good governance and human rights advocacy in Kenya.
The “ban” edict was widely seen both locally and internationally as a brazen political crackdown on critical civil society voices even before President Uhuru Kenyatta had formally assumed his second term in office.

These organisations were not going to be party to the intra-class parley to be hammered out of court! A combination of known irregularities in the electoral process under Wafula Chebukata, plus the uncertain control of the state over the Supreme court under David Maraga, set bowels running high up in the state ladders. We already saw a glimpse of that high panic when Dr. Roselyne Akombe Kwamboka, the pleasant side of the IEBC double-faced monster, was rudely shot down from the sky. Not only was she hauled unceremoniously out of a New-York-bound flight, but she was given the Eastlands police cell treatment.

WHY?
Don't spill any beans lady. You really don't want to know why not! She has since then proved herself a perfect masochista. A use and willing re-use accessory to beasts.

Anyway, for this Matiang'i fellow, tough sherif he thought he was, I offered to think in reprieve he was just another figurehead being played like a toy girl in an orgy, one in which he hadn't bargained for, nor was he in control of. Mitigating circumstances!

RAILA CHANGES HIS MIND

Ever the cat with many survival instincts, Raila read the mood of the country and saw the intra-class parley –--sanctioned by the likes of John Kerry for American security interests----- which he was set to receive and accept a bribe to underwrite, was dead in the water. He calculated better he enjoin, or even better, take the centre stage. This step, he convinced his co-conspirator classmates in toto (from Jubilee to NASA), would even be a better way to hoodwink the Kenyans and the world, that Kenya had arrived at eternal peaceful, constitutional mediation and resolution of political conflict.

Who could say No, so long the result was guaranteed. Ouru would still have his win. Though the other minor candidates, though professors, were slow to recognise the genius of this arrangement, finally they grudgingly accented to complete their part in the farce they had entered into when they presented nomination papers.

But from the moment it went to court, the political elite were no longer in charge of the modus operandi. They surrendered the impetus to the legal wing of the ruling class. And this latter elite is involved in a protracted civil war of REFORMATION.

POWER PLAYS AND ELITE SETTLEMENTS OF ELECTION PARTITIONS

The lawyers, or legal fraternity of the republic have of course no shortage of neither vanity, pomposity nor foolhardiness. The cream of them are so insulated by big-bucks they too self-righteous to suffer self-doubt, even as every other Kenyan knows they are a banditry. They of course seized the opportunity and quickly moved to attempt a lock on the Kenyan consciousness between them.

The drama is well documented as the queens perform before the benches of David Maraga and his band of red-robed blacks.
Howbeit Zeus watched as one gang of rotten lawyers fought the corner of the compromised IEBC and the Jubilants, while the other motley crew of corrupted lawyers fired non-stop volleys on behalf of the grieving NASA family. And both ways taxpayer Wanjiku picks up the tab.

It is doubtlessly a neat arrangement for business for this elitary caste, were it not for the politics, or specifically, the political economy of Justice in a neo-colonial credit-binge economy. That political economy, even in the short term, would suggest such arrangements of impunity are deluded. It is merely the looting spree, the scavengerial frenzy of rodents smelling a big cat stalking the prey.

The petition was actually irrelevant to these sods, until the unexpected happened again. Zeus threw a thunderbolt into the mixture! And the gathering scampers in confusion. –-What now from here!? Is this the slingshot which did Goliath in?

NB: There is this footage from Mathare North. The gang of thugs temporarily under Matiang'i were obviously not prepared for a Jubilant crowd running toward them with olive branches of joyful celebration. A smart cameraman caught the twitching, undecided finger of a young GSU-man on the trigger! Somewhere deep in the conditioned animal brain of the dog, there still lurked enough human instinct to differentiate a mob from a mob! Joy from Pain!

I know exactly how that cop was feeling in that uncertain moment.
Now, back again to the b!tchy squabbles between sycophants of the two royal houses from the Lake and Mountain! (who for instance, will oversee the re-run!?)

Thooo! Yawa!

This diet of permanent campaigns builds no nation! Works lies undone!