Our Judiciary must protect Kenyans from poll saboteurs

Sophia Abdi Noor

Kenya’s supreme law is clear that there must be a substantive President and Government at any given time. That said, Kenyans are still coming to terms with the Supreme Court lengthy judgement on the August 8 presidential elections. Of utmost importance is the Court’s insistence that the IEBC, regardless of the supposed systemic challenges it encountered, is the only body that can conduct the repeat election. I commend the judges for not falling into the trap of the Opposition, which wanted specific IEBC officials indicted. Now, the Opposition has had to look for another anti-repeat polls campaign issue.

They were waiting to pick the “IEBC fall guys” missile to advance their political agenda of boycotting elections. Instead of being on the campaign trail looking for the votes they need to beat the Jubilee juggernaut, they are trying to scuttle the October 26 polls.

They are tirelessly working to ensure the upcoming election is mired in so much crisis that they will not be “fair and transparent”.

The Judiciary should know the Supreme Court judgement left the country more divided than it was during the election. We risk having a country where elections are deliberately messed up by interested parties just to have them annulled if those parties are not declared winners. We cannot have players in an election throwing in poisonous chalice and deliberately build up evidence for petitions even before results are declared.

I understand President Kenyatta’s fury at the subversion of the will of the people which gave him a 1.4 million gap against the Opposition. We are staring a constitutional crisis if the Judiciary continues to give judgments, especially in the lower courts, which would seem to derail the smooth process of the repeat polls.

Witch hunt and innuendo

Merchants of doom are all out with all manner of applications and counter applications, all meant to drive the point home that the repeat polls should not happen if one side is not guaranteed a win.

The Judiciary must, therefore, rise above partisan and vexatious political interests and ensure the IEBC is given a conducive and litigation free environment for the October 26 polls. Reason must prevail in the Judiciary and at the back of their mind, they must resist the invitation to plunge this country into a further constitutional mess.

It could do this by hearing and determining the case(s) against the current IEBC and its role in the fresh election as soon as possible. Kenyans, on their part, must demand an issue-based campaign to make their democratic choices the way they did on August 8.

We have been subjected to so much politics of witch hunt and innuendo that it is time we resisted an attempt to sacrifice our nationhood at the altar of personal or ethnic ambitions.

In this second chance, we must support an electoral process acceptable to all so that after the will of the people is given, then we can hurriedly launch our reconciliation path. There are indications this country is politically divided in the middle and the first step is to have a fair election which should lead to unification.

The writer is the Ijara MP.