Kethi Kilonzo has been blocked from running in next week's Senate by-election to replace her allegedly poisoned father raising questions about Kenya's future electoral stability.

It has been barely a hundred days since Uhuru Kenyatta was sworn in as president of Kenya, after elections in March which he hailed as a 'triumph of democracy' and were praised around the world after they passed off without a repeat of the ethnic violence which followed those of 2007. Now, however, the saga of Kethi Kilonzo and the Makueni by-election threatens to unravel any democratic gains made earlier this year.

The saga began on 27 April with the possible-poisoning, by person or persons unknown, of Mutula Kilonzo, the newly-elected Senator for Makueni County and a member of the Wiper Democratic Movement, part of the opposition Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD). In the resulting by-election, Mutula's daughter Kethi was nominated by Wiper as their candidate to replace her father.

An unregistered lawyer?

Kethi had recently achieved prominence in Kenyan politics as the lawyer at the head of the African Centre for Open Governance's petition against the declaration of Uhuru Kenyatta as president of Kenya.

Her confident performance in front of the Supreme Court turned her into an opposition hero and even those who opposed her had to concede some admiration. Given her father's recent success, it seemed that she was certain to succeed him as Makueni's Senator. However, in late June the ruling Jubilee coalition claimed that Kethi was not a registered voter and therefore could not stand as a candidate.

On 8 July, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) agreed, claiming that Kethi's voter registration card had been fraudulently obtained. Kethi appealed to the High Court but today, 19 July, they sided with the IEBC, barring her from the race and raising the possibility of criminal charges being brought against her.

Danger ahead

At first glance, it might seem that this was the best outcome for Jubilee. A deeply flawed voter registration system was one of the bigger controversies of this year's elections, and a High Court decision finding that the IEBC was not able to say who was and was not a registered voter would have cast serious doubts over the legitimacy of Kenyatta's victory.

However, while the government may have avoided the immediate danger, the whole affair has caused a loss of faith in Kenya's electoral institutions on the part of CORD and many of their voters. Senior CORD figures such as former Prime Minister and defeated presidential candidate Raila Odinga and former Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka have blamed the government for Kethi's travails.

Kalonzo pointed the finger at The National Alliance (TNA), the major party within Jubilee, saying that the Makueni by-election has shown that 'TNA is IEBC and IEBC is TNA'. Raila, meanwhile, has warning that CORD will not contest future elections until the IEBC is reformed, describing the commission as 'the most corrupt and inefficient electoral commission in the history of this country'.

These are strong words, especially given that the IEBC was itself created as a replacement for the discredited Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) which faced similar accusations of corruption and incompetence for its administration of the 2007 elections. The wider implications of Kethi's disqualification, however, reach further than the prospect of CORD boycotting future elections.

Undermined institutions

Oxford University's Nic Cheeseman, who monitored the 2013 elections, has suggested that a major factor which prevented a repeat of the violence of 2007 was the presence of electoral institutions which the opposition felt they could trust to administer the election properly and resolve any disputes fairly.

The IEBC was supposed to be just such an institution and, having announced his intention to challenge the results through the IEBC and the courts, Raila Odinga could not then have taken to the streets once his petitions were rejected. Taking the institutional route bound him to abiding by its rules.

Now that they believe Kenya's electoral institutions are biased against them, CORD's leaders may be disinclined to this route in the future. Even if both the IEBC and the High Court have made the correct decision and Kethi is not in fact a registered voter, irregularities in the registration process pointed to by Kethi's lawyers, as well as the IEBC's initial decision to clear her to stand in Makueni, suggest that at least Raila's accusations of inefficiency are well founded. At best they are incompetent, at worst corrupt. Either way, any future election overseen by an unreformed electoral commission is unlikely to pass off as peacefully as this year's did.

With the Makueni by-election scheduled to take place on 26 July, it is unclear whether or not Wiper will launch a last minute attempt to find a replacement for Kethi and, if they do, whether Kethi's supporters will vote for whoever they find.

Many have been saying they will not vote, or will write 'Kethi' on their ballot papers but in the end their hostility to Jubilee's candidate, heightened by the coalition's alleged manipulation of the IEBC, may drive them to vote anyway.

Whatever the eventual outcome of the election, the damage to the image of Kenya's political system has already been done. The controversy of the Makueni by-election has revealed serious problems with the IEBC, even if they are not actually corrupt, and have destroyed any faith that the opposition may have had in the ability of Kenya's electoral machinery to deliver a fair result. In more ways than one the IEBC has become the new ECK, and the story of Kethi Kilonzo's failed political career has set Kenya back a few democratic steps.

Chris McKeon is a graduate of Cambridge University where he focused on African history, receiving a BA in History and an MPhil in African Studies. He tweets in a personal capacity at @cjmckeon