By D S
I have avoided writing about the on-going theatrics at the Supreme Court (SCOK) because, well they ARE just that, theatrics.
Why do I say that?
Well let’s start off with those ill-fitting wigs!
Seriously? Can you say contrived, trite and ill-fitting?
And here I thought “Kenya was rising (and writing its own story)”. Maybe it’s the time I have spent abroad, US to be exact, but lawyers (or barristers in Kenyan-speak) here do not wear such garishness. They are mostly bespoken but not as if they were part of a 19th century blackface minstrelsy performance – in the Queen’s Courts no less!
And while I agree that a presentation in front of the Supreme Court should be the zenith of most legal careers, “should” is the operational word.
Any lawyer presenting a case in front of the robed justices of the Supreme Court should be able to write their tickets thereafter – especially if (a) they’ve done their homework, (b) they are blessed with the gift of gab and can quote/cite dead white men/poets oftentimes in a dead language (of which Latin is one), (c) the specifics of the case portend a monumental impact in the society and (d) the case the lawyer is supporting/defending has an altruistic, “greater good” sense about it.
From the get-go, y’all know where my bias lies – and so it is with the on-going case.
I support NASA’s petition against the now-obviously manipulated IEBC-announced results of the just-concluded general elections pitting Uhuru Kenyatta vs. Raila Odinga.
Only the most partisan toady can argue that Ezra Chiloba, Wafula Chebukati and the coterie at the IEBC played it straight translating the vote tallies from the precincts as reflected on Forms 34A (source data) onto Forms 34B – which were then scanned/transmitted through the black hole that is the Kenya Integrated Election Management System (KIEMS); results that were then announced by a visibly stressed IEBC Chairman Chebukati on August 11th.
IEBC did not play it straight and that’s why they cannot produce the raw data (34A) and are having a hard time allowing Orengo and Co. access to the server that contains the scanned Forms 34B i.e. the electronic version of Forms 34A!
The foregoing aside and to reiterate my earlier prediction, in a couple of weeks, SCOK will rule that the 2017 Presidential Elections were rigged, manipulated, tampered with etc. BUT not enough to “affect the final announced outcome”.
So like the “august” body did in 2013, SCOK will rule in favor of Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto.
Kenyans will then proceed to break or dislocate their shoulders patting themselves on the back while announcing how “far they have come compared to S. Sudan, Rwanda and Somalia” even as the same kleptocratic former crimes-against-humanity suspects and their cabal continue to eat.
Back to the on-going Kabuki Theater at SCOK, the bluster by one particular actor has been hot and heavy though belied by his obvious lack of fidelity to the spirit (honesty) of the very laws he is now bloviating about. For all the loquacious grandiloquence (I am beginning to sound like him!) of this barrister, the petition is pretty straight forward:
Why were the vote tallies cast at the constituency level different from the totals transmitted AND announced by the IEBC?
The grand soliloquy the barrister launched into and is known for did NOT and does NOT answer that simple math problem!
I am sure that many viewers and listeners were wowed by the elegant prose masquerading as (a) a response to NASA’s petition and (b) sufficient reason why the petition should be denied:
That like Colin Powell, Condi Rice and Tony Blair during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq circa 2003, the masterly and courtly ease with which a simple 1+ 1 = 2 morphed into the dreaded Pythagoras Theorem, the bane of many a trig student, only to reappear as a “small thing which no law knows the cure for” was the “piece de resistance” – so announced the lawyer.
Along the way, arcane and archaic expressions such as “de minimis non curat lex” and the comparatively simple “sui generis” and “res judicata” were dispensed with such ease and pomposity that some were left wondering how anyone could challenge the veracity of such a performance!
This barrister obviously subscribes to the belief that “quid quid Latine dictum sit altum videtur” i.e. anything said in Latin sounds profound – only that it doesn’t always – certainly not in this case!
Because once the long-winded illustration of “throwing everything including the kitchen sink against the wall and hoping something sticks” is deconstructed, the counsel’s obfuscation fails to answer two simple questions:
1) Why are the vote tallies cast at the constituency level markedly different from the totals transmitted AND announced and (2), does the end justify the means?
To paraphrase Josaphat Nyamwange in a piece titled “Findings at the Supreme petition reveal a lot about IEBC and the future of Kenyan election” (Standard August 29th, 2017), Kenyans can accept Mr. Chebukhati’s announced results for the presidential race, the “how” said results were arrived at be damned!
Conversely, the country can insist on the “how” said results were arrived at; how the actual votes were cast and tabulated onto Form 34A then onto 34B through the server then formally announced: This, the proverbial making of sausage that is democracy, in my opinion quod erat demonstrandum i.e. is what should have been demonstrated by the meandering barrister.
It was not and at this rate, medoubts it ever will.
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