Thank goodness we have by-elections

By TED MALANDA

It would be in order to observe a moment of silence for politicians who recently lost their seats through election petitions, and those whose appeals were dismissed by the courts for lack of evidence.

Election petitions are a tough nut to crack in these parts. Mostly, they are based on allegations that dead voters rose from the grave and cast votes, that witches were hired to bewitch villagers drunk on chang’aa to vote for a certain candidate, and that in any case, the same voters were high like rockets because they had been bribed to get drunk.

Songs

It all sounds very nice when a motley of supporters are singing circumcision songs in your honour outside the lawyer’s office. Unfortunately, judges demand to see hard evidence, yet witches and ghost voters are by their nature the sorts of shadowy characters you just can’t drag to court as witnesses.

It doesn’t help that your lawyer will be alluding to a bribe which was flushed behind a bush by a squatting and inebriated voter six months earlier and that the witness, who was allegedly clobbered by your opponent’s supporters, recanted his evidence after a fat envelope convinced him to accept and move on for the sake of peace in the constituency.

But the moment of silence I would like us to observe is not related to post-traumatic disorder or kiwaru — that big lump of anger and pain that lodges in the throat when one loses a fight. Our condolences are instead based on the financial cost that comes with either losing an election or campaigning for re-lection.

There are cheap t-shirts to print, boda boda operators, witchdoctors and noisy loudspeakers to hire, crooks masquerading as political advisors to recruit. Meanwhile, your lawyers sending angry demand letters, even when they did such a lousy job that the judge dismissed your petition as a waste of the court’s time and an abuse of the judicial process.

Goons

But there is always a silver lining behind every cloud, much as teeth gnashing politicians will have to gird their loins, shake empty wallets, toughen weary jaws and hire a new set of goons for a week of mudslinging, sloganeering and empty promises.

It’s great news for the youth, who got unceremoniously dumped the moment the March poll was done and they had escorted the triumphant mheshimiwa and his memsahib to his rural residence amid song, dance and a bullfight.

Booze

No one has been buying them balls, paying for football tourneys, handing out t-shirts, hiring their boda bodas or giving them a little quid for booze. Without these by-elections, the youth would have died of thirst and boredom because as we all know, all that youth want to do is play soccer and get drunk before and after the match.

But having said that, all governors should learn lessons from Makueni Governor, H.E Prof Kivutha Kibwana, EGH, attorney at law, loving granddad, activist.

This mzee, instead of mollycoddling county reps and giving them mortgages, money for cars and fat allowances wanted to slash the county assembly’s budget from Sh1 billion to a miserable Sh500,000. The cheek!

He even invited his people to turn up and tell the ‘greedy county reps off. And turn up, they did, making a spectacle of themselves till midnight, when cops teargased them out, so that elected representatives could chomoka na bilioni in peace.

Don’t mess around with county reps, Your Excellences.