Gitau Warigi
16 August 2008
Nairobi — The confirmation of Mr Simon Mbugua as the MP for Kamukunji brings to four apiece the number of constituencies PNU and ODM control in the capital city.
The new balance of power has PNU holding Embakasi, Dagoretti, Makadara and Kamukunji while ODM has Lang'ata, Kasarani, Westlands and Starehe.
The Kamukunji outcome has national repercussions as well.
In terms of parliamentary numbers, the main party formations have roughly equal strength - 110 for ODM and its allies and 109 for PNU and its affiliates. (Under the grand coalition, Lugari MP Cyrus Jirongo's situation remains distinct after the Speaker ruled that he had a right to be recognised as the only Opposition MP).
But this balance is highly provisional, for there are two pending by-elections in Sotik and Bomet in the Rift Valley which ODM expects to win. The majority the outcome of the by-elections will bestow the party will nonetheless still be too narrow for comfort.
Election petitions
Depending on the outcome of two ongoing election petitions filed in Starehe and Makadara constituencies, the parties' strength in Nairobi could get altered again fairly soon. The seats are occupied by ODM's Bishop Margaret Wanjiru and PNU's Mr Dick Wathika.
There is no guarantee that the election court will order a reversal of the status quo, though PNU foot soldiers sound particularly hopeful of the Starehe petition. In Makadara, where Mr Wathika won narrowly against ODM's Mr Reuben Ndolo, it could be a toss-up.
The losing candidate in Kamukunji, ODM's Mr Ahmed Ibrahim, who has rejected the result announced following a court order, has vowed to file a petition.
After PNU's December debacle in Nairobi where it picked up only two seats (Makadara and Dagorretti), the party has since improved its fortunes starting with the Embakasi by-election that followed the death of ODM's Mr Mellitus Were.
Post-election figures confirmed that PNU's disastrous showing in Nairobi in 2007 was largely because, through its affiliates like Narc-Kenya, Kanu and the Democratic Party, it fronted multiple candidates who basically split the vote amongst themselves, costing the party almost sure wins in places like Embakasi and Kasarani.
Future by-elections
Kanu's legal point man and former Siakago MP Justin Muturi said this is a mistake the PNU coalition is not going to repeat in future by-elections in Nairobi. "That his how we prevailed in the Embakasi by-election where even ODM-K came to our side," he said
The gist of the High Court ruling regarding Kamukunji's disrupted electoral process was to debunk a basic misunderstanding that has been informing much of the reaction from MP-elect's opponents. The court ruling did not call for a recount, much less a repeat of the voting like happened in Kilgoris.
"The parliamentary election for Kamukunji stalled at the tallying stage which for all practical purposes is a mathematical exercise of adding up the results submitted by presiding officers in forms 16A," the court ruled.
Counting of votes is done at individual polling stations, where totals for each centre are also announced by the presiding officers.
By the time a violent episode disrupted the tallying at the Shauri Moyo Hall in Kamukunji last December, the counting of ballots had been completed and only the tallying of the figures from the different polling centres remained unfinished.
But even here the bulk of the tallying had been done save for a few stations.
Mr Mbugua had taken a commanding lead at the time, prompting him to later say that even if the votes for the centres that had not been tallied were given to the opponent next in line, he (Mbugua) would still have won.
It was the view of the High Court panel that ECK erred in cancelling the Kamukunji election since the "critical steps" of casting votes and counting the same had already been completed.
An ECK official, who preferred not to be named, concurred: "The decision has set the record straight on the limits of the ECK to cancel an election, the eminence of the High Court in affirming the rule of law and the election court as the final arbiter in all election disputes."
Mr Mbugua had gone to court specifically to ask for the completion of the tallying and the announcement of the winner.
As per court documents, he had not sought a recount.
The situation was quite different in Kilgoris, where a similar frenzy of violence forced a fresh election to be called.
Election materials were completely destroyed when the building they were housed was petrol-bombed, which meant the ECK had no record to fall back to. In Kamukunji, everything was left more or less intact, save for the disappearance of three ballot boxes.
But since the boxes disappeared after the tallies were in, the judgement of the Court was that this had not materially affected the result.
Kamukunji is the smallest of the eight city constituencies (in terms of registered voters). Still, by standards of rural constituencies, which average in the region of 50,000 voters, it is still massive with its 119,015 voters, just marginally below Dagoretti's 120,875
After 10 years of the rather excitable leadership of Mr Norman Nyagah, Kamukunji was clearly ripe for a change.
By the time the General Election approached, Mr Nyagah's popularity had seriously plummeted over what was seen as chronic absenteeism from the constituency, not to mention what was seen by constituents to be his cavalier attitude toward Constituency Development Fund projects.
Even by the usual nature of city elections, Kamukunji had attracted an unusually high number of parliamentary aspirants in 2007.
A lot of these were of the "activist" sort who were largely unknown in the area like Ms Anne Njogu, who is remembered for an incident where then Health Minister Charity Ngilu tried to spring her out of police custody.
Lawyer Patrick Lumumba, who loves quoting Shakespeare, was well-received though he seemed out of place in Kamukunji's rough and noisy politics.
Also on the list of candidates was Pastor Pius Muiru of the Maximum Miracle Church, who together with Ms Nazlin Umar gave Kamukunji the distinction of being the only constituency in the country with two candidates aspiring to become president.
In the end only three candidates mattered: PNU's Mbugua (22,614 votes), ODM's Ibrahim (16,016) and ODM-K's Abdi Yusuf Hassan (7,663).
Whereas it was Mr Nyagah's perceived neglect that brought him down, Mr Mbugua has courted controversy of a different sort even before becoming MP.
Even as he was being declared the winner, a warrant of arrest was out for him over a business matter.
Mr Mbugua, who locals like to refer to as their mtaa (neighbourhood) man, first contested in Kamukunji in 2002 on a Kanu ticket and scored a creditable 7,000-odd votes.
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