JAMILA'S MEMO: Advice on that aspirant’s integrity dilemma

The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) gave their elections counterparts, IEBC the names of 241 officers whom it thinks should not be allowed to run for office.

My memo is to the IEBC because seeking not to impose but strongly recommend for the welfare of Chapter 6, won't make sense for IEBC to keep claiming to have its own interpretation of integrity when the body charged with promoting ethics and fighting corruption in the country does what looked to me like a thorough job, of background checking aspirants for elective positions. A whole 21,863 of them.

Looking at each; one by one, and out of the thorough exercise some 241 were found with questions worth noting in the vetting of aspirants for elections.

Just to remind the IEBC of the breakdown: EACC has listed two presidential aspirants and a running mate. 61 governorship and deputy governor aspirants and six senatorial aspirants. 19 woman representative aspirants have also been flagged alongside 58 constituency MP aspirants and 94 MCA aspirants.

Okay, one may want to wish away this list, but what if all the 241 actually went ahead and won the positions they are aspiring to? What is the IEBC telling us? What would be their post-election argument when the horse has bolted? And when some of their successful aspirants start facing the consequences of the issues for which they have been sighted by the EACC?

Talking of horses, there is that common dense inference to not placing the cart before the horse.

I’ve been following this integrity question for some time now and I am quite intrigued by the propositions of the IEBC.

IEBC’s argument seems to start and end with the justice Msagha Mbogholi’s innocent until proven guilty decision that allowed President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto to run for office in 2013 despite the crimes against humanity charges at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

IEBC holds to this decision with the fastness of the only last desperate standing truth.

I am not a lawyer but regular logic also has a huge role to play in conversations about integrity. And logic will for example wonder, is the IEBC overdoing it when it sees nothing wrong with clearing a murder suspect on trial to run for an office of public trust? Doesn't it rock anyone’s conscience when an aspirant with billions of Kenyan shillings in question to their name is allowed to be just the IEBC away from public office?

It troubles me that even some courts are playing ball complete with the political equivalent of water breaks for suspects of serious crimes to take a pause from the trial to participate in campaigns and defend their seats.

On basic logic and common sense I beg to disagree. And again I am not a lawyer but I know the law must walk out of the pages of the Constitution, the Statutes, and any other regulations and be a practical implementable fact of life. And I suspect this is what these big lawyers mean when they talk of the spirit of the law.

The IEBC should be careful about a later date review of its handling of the present-day integrity questions. It should be careful not to leave so much on the letter of the law only to let the spirit of that law die in their hands. The totality of my memo is this, integrity is also a common-sense question.