Dramatic finish bound to leave voters drained after acrimonious poll

Someone needs to put us out of this electioneering misery. Can we just vote tomorrow? We are now growing sick and tired of electoral politics. These six months of 2017 already feel like six years of electioneering. To the weary Kenyan voter, a day has become like a thousand years.

Even the keenest political enthusiast can barely take it anymore. And for three reasons. The first is that the electioneering period is not a contest between two ideas. That would’ve been more exciting. It is instead the usual cyclical tribal tournament.

Secondly, it is not new. This has been a ‘rinse-repeat’ laundry cycle that dates back to 1966. The same dynasties are duelling - we the pawns are just circumstantial participants. It is Jomo and Jaramogi, Kanu and KPU all over again. I daresay the ending of this contest will be no different from back then; the more things change, the more they stay the same.

But alas, weary Kenyans. No matter how long we think this thing is dragging on, the date is set in constitutional stone.

The next best thing would be to take a long restful nap and get IEBC to wake us up when it is time to vote. Hopefully, we won’t experience nightmares as we sleep, driven by the trauma of this seemingly endless electioneering purgatory. But if we do, they will be three very clear bad dreams.

Nightmare number one would be that electioneering is extended by a whole month, and 4 days. This would be as a result of the fact that we Kenyans are becoming increasingly litigious. We threaten to take everyone to court for everything and anything. We could take someone to court for having bad thoughts about us if we had the grounds. If Jubilee wins, NASA will move to court. And vice versa.

Filing petition

It is almost impossible to imagine that between the day the election results are announced, and the deadline for filing a petition - we will not have multiple petitions arising from regular private citizens all the way to the most current perennial litigant, James Orengo. They will come fast and thick. The constitutional timeline for the Supreme Court to give a ruling is two weeks after the deadline of the date of petition.

So, on August 22, a petition is presented contesting the election results, on September 5 the Supreme court rules the election valid and on September 12, the president elect is sworn in.

Nightmare number two is even more scary: Electioneering extended by 3 months and four days. This will happen in the event that there is a run-off.

If this happened then we will go three months with President Uhuru exercising temporary incumbency. We may not have a new President until November 14.

This is because on August 15 election results will be declared, by the 22nd, someone will present a petition challenging the outcome of the election.

On September 5, the Supreme Court will give its ruling. On October 5, a run-off will be held. On the 12th, results will be declared. On October 19 another petition contesting the outcome will be presented. On November 2 the Supreme court gives its ruling, upholding the run-off results and finally, on November 14, the winner will be sworn in. This is quite frankly a nauseating thought but a highly probable outcome of the forthcoming election.

Nightmare number three and by far the least desirable is the probability of us being in electioneering mode till kingdom come. Consider a scenario where there is no clear winner declared in the election. On August 22 a petition is filed at the Supreme Court whose outcome is that a run-off is required.

Run-off

On October 5, the presidential run-off is held. On October 19, a petition is presented to the Supreme Court. And on November 2, rather than uphold the results of the run-off, the Supreme Court declares that a fresh election must be held, taking us to January 2, 2018.

Once this happens, we reset the election period and January 2, becomes the new election date, with the motions beginning all over again!

The thing about bad dreams is that you can snap out of them and be glad that they were just night terrors, not reality. However, these possibilities are provided for in our Constitution. Nothing is can be more real than that.

May this election period end soon. And when it ends, may it really end. Until then, sweet dreams.

—The writer is a PhD candidate in Political Economy at SMC University and a Research Fellow at Fort Hall School of Government. [email protected]