By Bernard Mwinzi
RAILA WILL NOT WIN THIS BY THE BACKDOOR!’ REMEMBERING MY LAST,
HEATED ENCOUNTER WITH WAFULA CHEBUKATI
I arrived in town to the shocking news of the passing of Wafula
Wanyonyi Chebukati, the man who chaired the Independent Electoral and
Boundaries Commission from January 2017 to January 2023.
The first thing that crossed my mind when I heard of his death
at Nairobi Hospital was my last meeting with him just a few days to the General
Elections in August 2022.
I had been summoned by the IEBC following a series of articles I
had authored for the Daily Nation, specifically a Page 1 headline I had written
that that had summed up the upcoming polls as ‘The Making of an Opaque
Election’.
As I walked to the small boardroom at the Bomas of Kenya, where
preparations for the elections were in top gear, I knew I was in for a thorough
hiding. But I was wrong. This was not going to be a hiding; it was going to be
a brutal roasting.
I had hoped to meet him alone, to perhaps argue over a cup of
coffee and call a truce. Again, I was wrong. Chebukati walked into the room
accompanied by several commissioners.
He looked at me with absolute disdain as he settled into his
seat at the farthest end of the room. His deputy, Juliana Whonge Cherera, sat
to his right, while the then IEBC chief executive officer, Marjan Hussein
Marjan, sat to his left.
I had studied him as he walked in. I wanted to measure him up,
to understand him even in the reticence and awkwardness of the moment. To size
him up. He moved like a man carrying the weight of a thousand petitions on his
back, his slight stoop suggesting both the burden of responsibility and the
quiet amusement of a referee watching players trip over their own feet. His
eyes were slightly watery yet unnervingly piercing.
When he settled down and called the meeting to order, he spoke
softly, his voice measured, almost detached, as though he were merely an
observer in the grand circus unfolding before him. Yet, woven into that
gentleness was an acerbic edge, the kind that could slice through bluster with
a single phrase.
He, perhaps, had perfected the art of delivering punches that
sounded like casual observations during his stint at his law firm, Cootow and
Associates Advocates, which he had run as a sole proprietorship for 20 years
before resigning, to avoid conflict-of-interest accusations, after he was
appointed by President Uhuru Kenyatta to the commission in 2017.
I found him hard to bear, but I still respected him as a man, an
elder and a senior public servant. His words, noncommittal yet somehow
absolute, felt like reading tea leaves — open to interpretation, but ultimately
binding.
At Bomas, after we all settled in, he started by explaining the
circumstances of our meeting. He pointed out that the commission was not happy
with our journalism, with my journalism specifically, and that I was doing a
great disservice to this great nation by attempting to disparage the upcoming
election.
He told me, too, that the commission had resolved to deny NMG
advertising revenue until I put the house in order. I made a feeble attempt to
explain myself, but he calmly told me my time would come, so I should sit
pretty and let the commission express its dismay. He then handed me to Cherera,
who embarked on a long moralistic preachment binge and called me a few
colourful names, then handed me over to Marjan. By the time every commissioner
had finished with me, I had been beaten to a pulp.
Then, after they finished wiping the Bomas floor with my bum,
they asked me to talk. I mumbled a few sentences about why journalism sometimes
hurts, why it’s never personal, why it’s a bad idea to withhold advertising in
an attempt to force journalists to tow the line, and so on and so forth. At
that moment, however, I wasn’t interested in what had been, but what was to be.
I had exclusive audience with the entire commission, and I wanted to know what
they thought of the upcoming elections. So I asked them what they thought of
the process so far.
“Raila will not win this one by the backdoor!” Chebukati shot at
me.
“What do you mean ‘by the backdoor’?”, I enquired.
“You know… those court cases against the KIEMS kits, the small
matter about a manual register, and such things,” he said. “Mark my words, it
won’t happen.”
Raila had gone to court to challenge the use of KIEMS kits
during the election, saying they could be used to rig the election. He wanted
the IEBC to use a manual voter register, which he considered safer and more
fool-proof. I had been working on two scenarios: a Ruto win, and a Raila win. I
called the newsroom and asked the editors to stop working on the Raila scenario
and pour all their resources into the Ruto scenario.
“Why?” they asked me.
“Because, from what I have heard, we should all prepare for a
Ruto presidency,” I said.
And that, folks, is the Chebukati I remember: slightly stooped,
a man who had seen it all, said little, but ensured that, in the end, it was
his word that stood.
Rest in peace, Sir.
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