By Ted Malanda

Chicken thieves, pickpockets, murderers and those who dabble in hate speech for a living will be pleased to learn that judges and magistrates are busy. 

According to a dispatch from the Registrar of the High Court, 98 judges and magistrates will spend the next few months trying to figure out who stole elections (not why) and those who didn’t.

Amusingly, when judges ascertain that some crook stole an election, they don’t send him or her to jail. They don’t lower thick spectacles, glare at the scoundrel and pointedly ask, “Didn’t it strike you as stupid that you wanted to become a mheshimiwa, a honourable person, by stealing?”

Dismissed

Instead, judges simply announce that the petition has been dismissed or that the election of the thief has been nullified and horror of horrors, they make a ruling regarding ‘costs of the suit’. This is what should interest poll losers who angrily rushed to the courts without consulting their spouses. Costs of the suit are more painful than losing an election. 

But this is how it plays out. First, misguided elements cheat an otherwise very reasonable fellow that his people are dying for his leadership.

The otherwise reasonable fellow starts spending weekends in the village, hanging around funerals of people he doesn’t know, donating footballs, greeting people in churches and buying idlers booze.

Because he is a novice, he dances himself lame before the main dance and spends all his money months to the election. The circumstances force him to sell his two cars and a small plot in Nairobi. He also takes a loan on his matrimonial home to enable him run round the village bribing voters in the last three weeks before the election.

Shylock

But two days before the election, his opponent, who sells drugs, arrives and pours serious money. This forces him to rush to a shylock and borrow Sh3 million to splash around too. Of course he loses.

He gets angry because everyone had convinced him he was a shoo in for the job, not to mention the millions he borrowed and flushed down the drain. So before you can blink, he files a petition against the winner.

But the people who have filed elections might want to note that lawyers are as sweet as a lollipop when they are cheating you that you will win the case.  But when they come demanding for those costs of the suit, they are as mean as city council askaris.

They not only inflate legal fees but also come with auctioneers, who are licensed to carry guns and walk around with goons.

So election losers might wake up to the rude reality of getting their beds auctioned as well. Life.