It is unjust to reward election overseer with huge money

As English jurists say, the law is an ass. A good example of it is that, as taxpayers, even members of the party still complaining that it was robbed during the last presidential election now have to pay through the nose to help ensure an extraordinarily comfortable life for the very individuals whom they allege to have robbed them of their political rights.

Many law pundits will insist that it is legally correct to award skyscraping and – to the ordinary taxpayer – back-breaking amounts to the outgoing members of Kenya’s Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC).

The point, however, is that what is legally correct may not necessarily be socially correct.

For objective students of society aver that social correctness is much more important than legal correctness because, as constitution-makers usually assert, social interests are what control the content and form that the law itself eventually takes.

In other words, protection of interests that all members of a society have in common is what gives rise to any system of law.

Therefore, the law must always subserve those needs. In a word, a rubric of law is what must yield – that is to say, be removed or amended – whenever it is seen to contradict a society’s objective needs. In Kenya, then, we are in a dilemma. To be sure, all public servants should receive “good-service” or “thank-you” send-offs.

The problem lies only in how to define “good service”. Exactly who – in our governmental division of labour – decided that the IEBC had done excellent work and that, therefore, members should walk away with the whole of Kenya’s equivalent of Witwatersrand – an amount that does not do any kind of justice to Kenya’s taxpayer?

It is a problem because, to be accused of an election theft is to be accused of service only to one party or one coalition.

It is to be accused of disservice to another party or other parties. That is why it is unjust for the party in power to reward the election overseer with huge money from the Treasury since the Treasury does not belong to the ruling party but is owned jointly with all taxpayers, namely, with all other political parties and with all non-partisans.

STOLE THE ELECTION

Personally, I do not know and cannot affirm that the ruling confederacy stole the last election. I have never conducted any study on it and have never seen any conclusive evidence. Maybe my erstwhile colleague John Kamau – the Nation’s star investigative writer – will one day tell Kenyans the story, laden with all the important facts and figures, of what really happened during and just after Kenya’s last General Election.

But this much I can say. Both in law and in politics, whenever you are accused of such a crime – as certain oppositionists never cease to accuse the ruling coalition – you are duty-bound, socially, to produce a thorough self-defence response laden with facts and figures. I have never seen anything of the kind from our ruling brothers and sisters.

No, to say so is not to assert positively that the ruling coalition stole the last presidential and other polls. It is merely to remind the leaders of that coalition that they have not yet produced – and must produce – a set of facts and figures that can shut the mouths of their adversaries in the opposition for all time.

It is only in their self-interests to do so. That, indeed, is why the leaders and members of the IEBC cannot hope that the Executive will always be dominated by individuals who favour them.

Even if the present IEBC individuals go scot free, there is no reason why anybody with a locus standi on the matter will not reopen the case at some future date.

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