Will the real Kethi Kilonzo please stand up?

Posted by: The People in Editorial July 7, 2013 0 2360 Views

THE saga of the Makueni senator race and the role of one Kethi Kilonzo is starting to stretch the imagination. It has emerged that she presented ineligible identification papers to be allowed to run for the seat. That is unfortunate indeed. Further, it has also turned out that she used an expired passport to enrol a a voter, at a place she can not clearly recall. For a 36-year-old practising lawyer, the fact that she was able to register well before the registration exercise started is starting to sound like fiction. Further, her status as a registered voter was thrown into peril when lawyers representing the IEBC and her opponents brought out details over exactly where she registered as a voter.

It turns out she insisted she registered at a school in Ngong, in contrast with her slip, which told the story of registration in Karen. Indeed, the IEBC says there is no such centre in their data as Karen, which begs the question: Just where did she register, if at all she did? Further, her registration slip says she registered in 2011, as opposed to her testimony that she registered last year. If it is true that all the foregoing is true, and that she testified that she could not remember where she registered, her suitability to vie for senator comes into serious question. If she registered using a photocopy of her identity card, there was an obvious breach of the law, of which she is an officer.

Whether or not she was allowed to vote using an expired document, the fact that she presented it at all, as a lawyer, raises questions about her fidelity to issues of law and justice. These claims, whether true or not ought to inform her future engagements with election procedures, even as she takes on other opponents for the race to become senator. These issues raise extremely serious matters that also put the credibility of the IEBC into question. It would have to explain to Kenyans how she was allowed to vote without being in possession of proper papers. Indeed, it also does not make sense that she registered using an expired passport, yet was allowed to vote.

A big section of the population believes IEBC’s job in the March 4 elections was far from splendid. The revelations in the ongoing petition cases are worrying. The electoral body’s officials have been accused of sleeping on the job or blatantly abusing the rules to alter the election outcome in favour of some candidates. This does not bode well for us as a maturing democracy. IEBC needs to show that is above board in its dealings all the time.