The burden of living an electoral lie continues to pile on our back. The shouts to move on may casually appears objective but the startling revelations and confessions from last year’s poll officials is like a screw riveting into a healing wound. So are we living a political lie in the hope that time as the good old adage puts it is a healer?
Judge Kriegler's electoral postmortem probe team is resuscitating the dead and the pain is unbearable. The Changamwe Constituency’s returning officer must have considered it extremely humorous admitting that he erroneously gave Kibaki 9,366 votes while Emilio actually garnered 15,151 votes. To rub it on the RO shamelessly concedes that he mistakenly recorded 17,706 votes for Raila’s instead of the correct tally of 29,648. Leaves you wondering which base he was using in his arithmetic.
It would have be forgivable if the electoral FRAUD was limited to isolated cases and committed by junior staff. Well, hold your breathe for the bombshell revelation that the ECK boss Samuel Kivuitu himself announced the presidential results before results from 31 constituencies were officially verified. That is almost 15% of Kenyan’s 210 electoral constituencies locked out or discarded while declaring Kenya’s president for the next 60 months.
Numbers don't lie
In Changamwe return officer’s mind it must have been an act of unrivalled honesty to simply explain his criminal act as a mere mistake reminding Judge Kriegler for good measure that to error is human. Smart rigging takes place many months ahead of the polls itself. Mr Sheikh Aman was handed his RO job without any interview in present day Kenya and he had to deliver. You can bet your next lunch that he was not the only Aman in the whole scheme.
ECK’s IT team ordered laptops and trained ROs six months before the poll only to advice on the reliability of manual tallying. That is enterprising Kenyans killing numerous birds with no stone. You see the taxpayers purchase the computers which are not used, trainers pocket the allowance for doing nothing and more importantly you create the impression of work done and meet the ultimate objective THEFT.
So what is the price of stealing an election? Simple answer UNQUANTIFIABLE. Our future generation will continue to pay the steep price. Leaves you wondering who is fooling who in this whole fiasco. If only we were honest and took the singular bold step to correct the bleeding wrong by conducting FRESH and FAIR elections. Well, dream on. That is a risky gamble no enterprising Kenya will engage in given its guaranteed gloomy returns.
Insulting democracy
That two wrongs never made a right has been more true. Justifying the bungled elections with the hollow argument that both sides stole except the better thief won is flawed logic at best and an insult to democracy at worst. Unless we shun our DECEPTIVE ways and confront the truth head on, the charade will continue cascading and mutating into ugly monster waiting to collectively gobble the last Kenyan left standing.
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Perils of Living Expensive, Painful Political Lie Posted: August 26th, 2008, 5:50pm EDT