New ‘evidence’ about election fraud bound to yield more heat than light

IEBC Chairman Isaac Hassan with CEO James Oswago (Left) when Hassan announced president-elect Uhuru Kenyatta at the Bomas of Kenya on March 9, 2013. Photo/BILLY MUTAI

What you need to know:

  • Something entirely new and very convincing will have to be brought forth, and even then, Cord will be hard-pressed to persuade the public that the dossier is genuine.
  • One can predict that instead of waiting patiently for Cord to unveil its evidence and then preparing to rebut it, the Jubilee machinery will go into overdrive with angry rhetoric.

The disputed outcome of the presidential election has been revisited powerfully just as President Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto celebrate one year of the Jubilee coalition regime.

The defeated Cord alliance of Mr Raila Odinga and running-mate Kalonzo Musyoka has been threatening to release fresh information, which will prove that the Jubilee pair was not the legitimate winners of the presidential election.

But even before the dossier is unleashed, the media is going to town with trailers captured in television and print investigative pieces that breathlessly predict a major exposé in the offing.   

The latest is a tape recording where a top official of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission allegedly questioned the validity of the electoral process just a day before Kenyatta was declared the winner.

The new developments have predictably provoked a firestorm and fresh war of words just when everything had settled down nicely under the established political status quo.

A whole year after the elections, one must wonder what value there is in dredging up old bones. A petition filed in the Supreme Court challenging the presidential elections results was thrown out for lack of evidence.

A promise by the dissatisfied petitioners to lay out their evidence in the court of public opinion did not present anything convincing.

With so much time having passed, it is difficult to see how the evidence could be used to demonstrate that the Supreme Court’s decision upholding President Kenyatta’s election victory was wrong.

Something entirely new and very convincing will have to be brought forth, and even then, Cord will be hard-pressed to persuade the public that the dossier is genuine.

Jubilee might have little problem making the case that any such evidence coming at this late stage will be deeply tainted, if not outright manufactured.

DEEPLY SPLIT PUBLIC

The claim that the evidence has been subjected to vigorous forensic audit by experts in the United States, South Africa or elsewhere will cut little ice as long as it is supplied, and the audit commissioned, by Cord.
Jubilee, therefore, should have no reason to go into its usual teeth-gnashing histrionics or applying strong arm tactics to bar the media from airing the dossier. If anything, it should welcome the opportunity to show up the opposition’s folly, or desperation.

But one can predict that instead of waiting patiently for Cord to unveil its evidence and then preparing to rebut it, the Jubilee machinery will go into overdrive with angry rhetoric.
Premature rebuttals will smack of desperation and terror, that there is something to hide about the manner in which it secured its election victory.

Right now, of course, it is not the courts that Cord will be trying to win over, but a public that is still deeply split on the regular political-ethnic schisms.

Therefore, debate will be dominated by what side of the divide one sits 0n rather than on the merits or demerits of the election dossier.

Cordishians will take it as vindication of their long-held belief that Mr Kenyatta secured State House through fraud perpetrated in concert with the Electoral Commission and the State security and administrative machinery.

Jubilants will dismiss the new evidence out of hand, reprising their reflex dismissal of Mr Odinga as a born troublemaker and serial loser.

The problem here is that there will be more heat than light. My hope is that all can put aside ethno-political bias and preconceived positions and subject the dossier to reasoned critical analysis. The evidence should stand or fall on what it reveals, or fails to reveal, rather than on which camp can make the most noise.

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I did a quick census on the visit to the slopes over the Easter weekend, and determined that 75 per cent of the ‘Nissan’ matatus on the Nairobi-Nyeri Road are actually Toyotas.

But at least they kept to the speed limits, unlike the ground missiles ferrying miraa from Meru to Nairobi that have been granted immunity from all known traffic laws.

There’s no way the demented drivers would zoom past all those road-blocks and speed checks unless every traffic police boss on the route has been paid a bribe in advance.

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