New LSK boss Isaac Okero wants to set the bar high

Isaac Okero at his friend‘s office during the interview.

NAIROBI: Before the February 25, 2016 elections of the Law Society of Kenya, Isaac Okero was bashed, countless times, with at least three monikers. Outsider. Little-known. The also-ran in a two-horse race.

That was then.

Now that outsider, little-known, also-ran is the 47th President of the 68-year-old 10,000-member premier bar association.

The incoming-president’s in-tray is chock-full. Some files date back five years.

Still, he realises that, as the adage goes: You campaign in poetry but govern in prose.

And this is why, though his team has an almost carved-in-marble manifesto, and a to-do list for their first hundred days in office, Okero asserts that another urgent business is to unite the society’s members.

Part of that pressing agenda involves listening to all the members’ disparate voices. Okero chooses his words in a way that only a lawyer does.

“There has been a misconception that discontent was prevalent among younger members only,” he says. “But I have classmates in the law school class of 1988 who were just as unhappy as I was in the way the society was being run.”

A “file” on Okero’s in-tray is labeled ITEM SEVEN. It talks about conducting a forensic audit of all finances and activities of the society for the past five-or-so years.

What will happen if they find out that there was financial impropriety?

“We will follow the due process,” he says.

Another issue in the manifesto talks about sharing out opportunities with the membership.

Before the digital age, members would receive hard copies of the society’s newsletters in which they would be made aware of the council’s decisions and informed about vacancies in particular committees that they could apply for.

They would know who had been appointed to the committees in the subsequent newsletter.

“In recent times, we do not even get to hear of these vacancies,” Okero bemoans as, in the background, a bottle cap sound chimes, for the umpteenth time.

“We only come to learn, and not through official channels, that some members serve in certain committees. This is going to change.” Art does sure imitate life.

LEGAL DRAMA

Save for Okero’s salt-and-pepper beard and darker complexion, he is Steve Harris’ doppelganger: from eyeglasses, to exact age, to build, to almost clean-shaven bean.

Steve played the character of Eugene Young on the legal drama, The Practice.

But, as you have rightly guessed, Okero is playing the role of reformer-in-chief in an unscripted roller coaster.

Isaac Edwin Nicholas Okero, known as Kolya, to his buddies, was born 51 years ago in Nairobi.

He is the second child among six children born to Isaac Omollo Okero and Jane Margaret.

Okero Senior, also a lawyer, worked at the Attorney General’s office, Commissioner for Customs and Excise and was a two-term Member of Parliament for Gem Constituency. He was was later appointed as the chair of Kenya Airways

Kolya studied law at the University of Buckingham, which he calls “a small university outside London.”

The father of two chambered with Oraro and Rachier Advocates, then joined his father’s law firm, before opting to fly solo.

In 1991, he joined Kisumu-based law firm, Joginder Singh Behan. His wife, Betty is active in civil society. Their daughter, Nicola, 22, is in her final year of law studies at Middlesex University in Mauritius. Kolya insists that he did not force Nicola to pursue law. Their son, Jason, is clearing high school this year.

When I bring up the subject of Okoa LSK, the armchair petrol-head chooses his words.

“Okoa LSK was nothing more than a rallying call that captured the discontent within the society’s membership over what we could see was a culture of exclusiveness, lack of transparency and accountability that had unfortunately set in in the leadership.

“People have mistaken Okoa LSK and some have even said it is beginning to look like a political party. But it was nothing more than a protest and rallying call.

“And it gained currency particularly with the issue of the International Arbitration Centre,” he says.

The story of the proposed 1.6 billion bob arbitration centre starts with the allocation of a parcel of land in South C, to the LSK, in 1992 by former President Daniel Moi.

After the passing of the 2010 Constitution, which entrenched the concept of alternative dispute resolution, LSK members proposed the construction of an arbitration centre on this plot. Then matters slid south.

“In late 2014, the council announced the resolution, made at a Special General Meeting, to levy members for the payment of the centre,” Kolya puts me in the know.

“A group of young members decided to express their displeasure, but were denied the opportunity to speak. “It was a matter of acute embarrassment that we, of all the professional groups, can have a General Meeting in which members are not permitted to express themselves.”

He says that led to an explosion of ideas and sentiments as to what needed to be done.

“It very quickly culminated in the idea that there should be a petition challenging this resolution and process in court. Signatures were collected around the country. I was one of the signatories to the petition,” he adds.

The bottle cap sound goes off again. It is Kolya’s ringtone signaling a text message. Just then, Joseph Gitonga M’Limbiine makes an entrance, heartily greeting him and calling him Prezzo. Kolya explains that the office he is in is M’Limbiine’s, and the two are establishing a partnership.

M’Limbiine was part of the group that worked to reform LSK.

Maybe it is this open-door policy that will make Kolya and Co to reclaim their society. Or, I surmise — and this is a long shot — Kolya may use the lessons he learnt over thirty years ago in his school’s swimming relay squad, of which he was a dependable member, to run this team race.

“I do not consider leadership to be an automatic assumption that I have all the answers,” he explains. “I think leadership needs to involve the members and have an approach in which one recognises where the talents are and opens up governance to tap into all those talents, old and young.”

COOKING CHINESE FOOD

This Prezzo is dressed for the job. Lawyer-style. Blue suit, blue shirt, a checked tie. It is yellow. But sometimes he exchanges this courtroom attire for an apron, to indulge in his pastime: cooking Chinese chow.

“I find it very relaxing. It reduces mental tension. In university, a Singaporean roommate always cooked with a wok. He taught me how to eat with chopsticks. When I left university, my friends gifted me a wok, a set of chopsticks and dishes, which I have to this day.”

Seems like Kolya’s wok is going to be working overtime, what with the stress that comes with his new territory. There is alleged rot in the fish’s head, the Judiciary, which does not augur well for the broth.

“We cannot disabuse ourselves of the notion that corruption is not present within the legal profession,” he says. “Existence of corruption in the Judiciary is bad for practice. It is very difficult to advise your client about his prospects in a case when you are dealing with a situation that may be changed by means other than the legal parameters.

“We take the oath to protect the rule of law and the administration of justice, without fear or favour and it has no room for us to engage in illegal means. Kenyans will not have faith in anti-corruption institutions if only small fish that are nabbed.”

I throw him a curve ball. Has he ever encountered a corrupt judge? “No comment,” he says.

However, he does not stonewall when I ask about the grave matter of some colleges, whose law degrees have been declared by the Council of Legal Education as not worth the paper they are written on.

“The LSK must be involved in the issue of law degrees. Part of our mandate is to assist the government in establishment of high standards of education. In fact, the society has representation on the board of the Kenya School of Law and in the Council of Legal Education.

“It will require a concerted effort between all mandated institutions to understand how this has happened and what needs to be corrected.”

During the LSK campaigns, there were candidates who played the party politics card. About his political party affiliation, he is not guarded, though. “I am not affiliated to any political party. I have voted in every election in Kenya, save for the queue voting of 1988. I did not consider that to be a proper election. But the use of these divisive terms is a deliberate tactic we have seen in election cycles in the past, deployed to gain political advantage.”

He says there is nothing wrong with having a political affiliation, but politics has no role in LSK.

“Campaigns were being run on the basis of personalities, not issues. And the press played along. When I thought questions would be about our manifesto, they asked if I was affiliated to a certain political party. The following week, the question would be ‘Are you still denying?’ and I would be forced to deny a non-existent fact.”

In Kenya, the bar seems to be the accessible ladder that many legislators use to climb to the August House.

Besides, Kolya is a chip off the old block, and at some point, he will he take a stab at elective politics, right?

“I don’t feel it,” he is adamant, but then he has a rethink. “Four years ago, I did not know I would be the President of the LSK. Never say never. But at this point, my focus is bringing reform to the LSK and then continuing with my practice.”

Ninety-something minutes later, after the interview is done and dusted, we shoot photos on the corridor outside Suite 12 on the fifth floor of 5th Avenue building.

UNTOLD HOT POTATOES

A blunt security guard hurriedly approaches, and tells us that we are going against the building’s code. That we cannot take photos.

There is no room for throwing one’s weight around. Or being a law unto oneself. Even the president of Kenya’s bar association is not above any bylaw, regardless of the socio-economic status of the person who is reading the riot act.

I wonder if 5th Avenue has a bylaw against playing the saxophone, in the confines of one’s suite.

Because, after eight o’clock, after everyone has gone home for the night in Bando Building, which houses his Kisumu law office, Kolya sometimes jams his rusty notes away. But then again, if the incessant bottle cap chimes are anything to go by, for the next two years, he will have untold hot potatoes on his hands that his tenor sax will rust. Literally.