RAILA will NOT win this!! Daily Nation journalist, BERNARD MWINZI, narrates his last heated encounter with WAFULA CHEBUKATI, a few days to elections - This man hated RAILA
By Bernard Mwinzi RAILA WILL NOT WIN THIS BY THE BACKDOOR!’ REMEMBERING MY LAST, HEATED ENCOUNTER WITH WAFULA CHEBUKATI I arrived in town to the shocking news of the passing of Wafula Wanyonyi Chebukati, the man who chaired the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission from January 2017 to January 2023. The first thing that crossed my mind when I heard of his death at Nairobi Hospital was my last meeting with him just a few days to the General Elections in August 2022. I had been summoned by the IEBC following a series of articles I had authored for the Daily Nation, specifically a Page 1 headline I had written that that had summed up the upcoming polls as ‘The Making of an Opaque Election’. As I walked to the small boardroom at the Bomas of Kenya, where preparations for the elections were in top gear, I knew I was in for a thorough hiding. But I was wrong. This was not going to be a hiding; it was going to be a brutal roasting. I had hoped to meet him alone, to perhaps argue over a cup of coffee and call a truce. Again, I was wrong. Chebukati walked into the room accompanied by several commissioners. He looked at me with absolute disdain as he settled into his seat at the farthest end of the room. His deputy, Juliana Whonge Cherera, sat to his right, while the then IEBC chief executive officer, Marjan Hussein Marjan, sat to his left. I had studied him as he walked in. I wanted to measure him up, to understand him even in the reticence and awkwardness of the moment. To size him up. He moved like a man carrying the weight of a thousand petitions on his back, his slight stoop suggesting both the burden of responsibility and the quiet amusement of a referee watching players trip over their own feet. His eyes were slightly watery yet unnervingly piercing. When he settled down and called the meeting to order, he spoke softly, his voice measured, almost detached, as though he were merely an observer in the grand circus unfolding before him. Yet, woven into that gentleness was an acerbic edge, the kind that could slice through bluster with a single phrase. He, perhaps, had perfected the art of delivering punches that sounded like casual observations during his stint at his law firm, Cootow and Associates Advocates, which he had run as a sole proprietorship for 20 years before resigning, to avoid conflict-of-interest accusations, after he was appointed by President Uhuru Kenyatta to the commission in 2017. I found him hard to bear, but I still respected him as a man, an elder and a senior public servant. His words, noncommittal yet somehow absolute, felt like reading tea leaves — open to interpretation, but ultimately binding. At Bomas, after we all settled in, he started by explaining the circumstances of our meeting. He pointed out that the commission was not happy with our journalism, with my journalism specifically, and that I was doing a great disservice to this great nation by attempting to disparage the upcoming election. He told me, too, that the commission had resolved to deny NMG advertising revenue until I put the house in order. I made a feeble attempt to explain myself, but he calmly told me my time would come, so I should sit pretty and let the commission express its dismay. He then handed me to Cherera, who embarked on a long moralistic preachment binge and called me a few colourful names, then handed me over to Marjan. By the time every commissioner had finished with me, I had been beaten to a pulp. Then, after they finished wiping the Bomas floor with my bum, they asked me to talk. I mumbled a few sentences about why journalism sometimes hurts, why it’s never personal, why it’s a bad idea to withhold advertising in an attempt to force journalists to tow the line, and so on and so forth. At that moment, however, I wasn’t interested in what had been, but what was to be. I had exclusive audience with the entire commission, and I wanted to know what they thought of the upcoming elections. So I asked them what they thought of the process so far. “Raila will not win this one by the backdoor!” Chebukati shot at me. “What do you mean ‘by the backdoor’?”, I enquired. “You know… those court cases against the KIEMS kits, the small matter about a manual register, and such things,” he said. “Mark my words, it won’t happen.” Raila had gone to court to challenge the use of KIEMS kits during the election, saying they could be used to rig the election. He wanted the IEBC to use a manual voter register, which he considered safer and more fool-proof. I had been working on two scenarios: a Ruto win, and a Raila win. I called the newsroom and asked the editors to stop working on the Raila scenario and pour all their resources into the Ruto scenario. “Why?” they asked me. “Because, from what I have heard, we should all prepare for a Ruto presidency,” I said. And that, folks, is the Chebukati I remember: slightly stooped, a man who had seen it all, said little, but ensured that, in the end, it was his word that stood. Rest in peace, Sir.
Ladun Liadi -
