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At this point it is difficult to tell if any of the aspirants for the upcoming election have been vetted, not because they have not been, but if they have been the vetting process has not been very public. Remember the vetting of the judges, the Chief Justice, the Attorney General, the Commissioners, all very public.
Of course there are trite responses as to why aspirants for elective positions have not been publicly vetted i.e. With 4,200 seats to be vied for there are just too many people to be vetted before the next election; or the citizenry will vet the aspirants for public office through their vote at the ballot box; or clearance to run in the election by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) is vetting enough.
In varying degrees all these arguments are probably quite valid. However since promulgation of the new constitution, there is a new standard against which we measure our elected leaders, Chapter Six of the constitution written about here, and here. And despite the MPs attempts to water down the constitution in the Leadership and Integrity Act the Constitution is still the main law of the land.
As part of its bid to hold leaders accountable to the standards set out in Chapter 6 of the constitution the Law Society of Kenya (LSK) recently published a report, “Realizing Integrity Law: Walking the Talk - A Consolidated Analytical Account of Adversely Mentioned Persons as Contained in Publicly Available Reports.”
The LSK report is quite a comprehensive in its coverage going into scandals as far back as 1991 i.e. The Commission of Inquiry into the death of Robert Ouko, 1991 (the Gicheru Commission Report); and covering more recent on-going corruption scandals - the Country Development Fund (CDF) Mismanagement (the Ababu Namwamba Report), The Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the land law system of Kenya, 1999/2009 (the Njonjo Commission Report), The Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Illegal and Irregular Allocation of Public Lands, 2003/2004 (the Ndung’u Report on land grabbing). The last one is quite pertinent considering land grabbing has been front and centre in the recent presidential campaigns.
The most interesting part of the LSK report, particularly if one does not have the time to read it in its entirety, is the consolidated matrix of adversely mentioned persons, persons recommended for prosecution or surcharge in relation to public loss, and outright crime of negligence in Kenya. It is shocking, or maybe not so shocking how many of the adversely are running in the March 4 election, particularly if vetting of aspirants has indeed taken place.
The report is quite careful and does not ascribe guilt. However the question remains should those implicated the serious crimes covered in the report (complicity to individual and / or mass human rights violations, incitement to violence, murder and forcible displacement of persons, aiding and abetting illegal activities, gross negligence in the performance of duty, including concealment of information, funding warriors who engaged in ethnic clashes) be allowed to stand for public office?
Read the full report here.
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