1 00:00:09,660 --> 00:00:12,420 Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to the afternoon session, 2 00:00:12,420 --> 00:00:19,020 we had such a fascinating panel in the morning and this is going to be another one of those exciting conversations, 3 00:00:19,020 --> 00:00:28,950 and we're delighted to be joined by an excellent panel. Today on my right is Louis Franceschi from the University of Strassmann and in Jordan. 4 00:00:28,950 --> 00:00:39,810 Barney follows him again from Struck More University and Nic Cheeseman, who was formerly Oxford and now University of Birmingham, and Ann McKenna. 5 00:00:39,810 --> 00:00:45,840 I work for the Africa Oxford Initiative, a platform that draws all of Africa's interest across the university. 6 00:00:45,840 --> 00:00:50,880 And this session will be about the Kenya Supreme Court ruling in 2017. 7 00:00:50,880 --> 00:00:54,810 The facts of which I think most of you would be familiar with, 8 00:00:54,810 --> 00:01:03,660 and I think both the cartoon at the top there just gives an illustration of the relationships between the courts and the politics in Kenya as a whole. 9 00:01:03,660 --> 00:01:13,270 And so I'm going to invite Louis to kick us off with giving us a bit more detail on the actual Supreme Court's decision in 2017. 10 00:01:13,270 --> 00:01:20,680 They thank you. And a first I have to begin with a disclaimer. 11 00:01:20,680 --> 00:01:31,930 She did not give me the right of speech or would it first because I have a tie a I have to explain that they love for convention, 12 00:01:31,930 --> 00:01:38,440 my love for convention, and it is inversely proportional to a distance between one away from my house. 13 00:01:38,440 --> 00:01:44,690 So we have added in a formal dinner tonight and I want to go back and get it. 14 00:01:44,690 --> 00:01:53,470 And yet, you know, I read today an article very recent by Richard Eakins. 15 00:01:53,470 --> 00:02:03,730 He speaks of the rise of political litigation. And he explains that the UK constitution is deeply political will. 16 00:02:03,730 --> 00:02:11,530 The Kenyan constitution is deeply, you could say, judicial A. 17 00:02:11,530 --> 00:02:16,390 It's very interesting because what we are witnessing nowadays and I express this, yes, 18 00:02:16,390 --> 00:02:25,690 to go to the issues to do with a duty is through the end of the recession because then a John will 19 00:02:25,690 --> 00:02:37,440 speak a little bit more about the context and and somehow the way I think we we agree we would move a. 20 00:02:37,440 --> 00:02:49,630 So we are witnessing the politicisation of the judiciary and the judicial system of politics weighing in in the UK you may speak of. 21 00:02:49,630 --> 00:03:00,190 Or he at least speaks of the politicisation of the judiciary or litigation and the rise of judicial litigation or political litigation in Kenya. 22 00:03:00,190 --> 00:03:03,430 We are witnessing the judicial decision of politics, 23 00:03:03,430 --> 00:03:10,430 meaning politicians go to court because the Constitution gives them the possibility the opening of the gates, 24 00:03:10,430 --> 00:03:18,550 the ample gate they go to court to sustain their political interests alive and kicking. 25 00:03:18,550 --> 00:03:29,410 Now, of course, what ends up happening is the politicians end up using the court as what William Mutunga calls. 26 00:03:29,410 --> 00:03:33,310 I'm sorry for putting so crudely, but as toilet paper, 27 00:03:33,310 --> 00:03:42,070 meaning they clean the mess a with the court and they blame the court did how this happened in 2013, 28 00:03:42,070 --> 00:03:47,980 when the court was blamed by half of the country for not having nullified the election. 29 00:03:47,980 --> 00:03:55,420 And this happening again in 2017, when the courts who are blamed by the other half for having nullified the election and then later on, 30 00:03:55,420 --> 00:04:07,030 he blamed for not nullifying the second election. So you find yourself with all these dilemmas, which when are very sensible and very interesting, 31 00:04:07,030 --> 00:04:15,190 very delicate and are building somehow a body of jurisprudence in Africa, which had never been seen before. 32 00:04:15,190 --> 00:04:25,420 Because one of the key legacies of the 2010 Constitution in Kenya is the independence of the judiciary, 33 00:04:25,420 --> 00:04:32,080 which was created by a structure that put in place systems that would help that. 34 00:04:32,080 --> 00:04:38,620 And thank God, Willy Mutunga, the first chief justice, made sure that the structure was put in place. 35 00:04:38,620 --> 00:04:46,570 Of course, I'm not going to answer, and this will just have like this political saying this if the judiciary is independent or not a. 36 00:04:46,570 --> 00:04:55,810 But let's look a little bit more at those genuine tensions with twisted in tensions between the politics and the law. 37 00:04:55,810 --> 00:05:08,620 In this specific case, so Francis Fukuyama explains in a nice way that the less you trust the executive, the more the litigation. 38 00:05:08,620 --> 00:05:14,770 And he gives a data on this assertion, and he says the more the litigation, 39 00:05:14,770 --> 00:05:20,170 the more checks and balances in the administration and the more checks and balances, 40 00:05:20,170 --> 00:05:28,570 the less efficiency in the administration of justice and the less efficiency, the less you trust the executive. 41 00:05:28,570 --> 00:05:32,500 So you fall into a cycle that has no end. 42 00:05:32,500 --> 00:05:41,230 You trusted little, you litigate more. And social media has come in to fuel the speed of that cycle. 43 00:05:41,230 --> 00:05:50,380 So we social media, the lack of trust of our government is exponentially increased in speed and reach. 44 00:05:50,380 --> 00:05:57,250 So we had this situation in Kenya at government, a system we trust. 45 00:05:57,250 --> 00:06:03,640 We did not trust much and we had a court system that still could be trusted. 46 00:06:03,640 --> 00:06:12,550 And this happened because the Constitution said somehow certain boundaries that made this new system reliable. 47 00:06:12,550 --> 00:06:18,550 In terms of appointment of judges budget, it said there are structure independence with a judge, 48 00:06:18,550 --> 00:06:25,930 personnel and structure structural then the election of the 8th of August takes place 49 00:06:25,930 --> 00:06:33,640 in 2017 and everything seems to be so smooth that is practically unbelievable. 50 00:06:33,640 --> 00:06:38,470 Results are streamlining. The application is working well. 51 00:06:38,470 --> 00:06:48,910 The electoral commission is showing the result. Certainly, some strange things start happening and people are still wondering what's happening here. 52 00:06:48,910 --> 00:07:06,970 And Raila Odinga loses the election. We 6.7 million who are looking at that win seat with 8.7 8.2 million and a well, the end results are declared. 53 00:07:06,970 --> 00:07:14,200 Raila Odinga goes to court and the court makes a decision, a decision that is binding. 54 00:07:14,200 --> 00:07:19,630 And according to a law within the timeframe specified that these elections, 55 00:07:19,630 --> 00:07:24,280 this declaration of results was not done in accordance with the Constitution. 56 00:07:24,280 --> 00:07:32,470 They declared those results invalid and they order for fresh elections to be done within 60 days. 57 00:07:32,470 --> 00:07:44,170 Now first, some people have called the Raila Doctrine that whenever you lose, you should go to court. 58 00:07:44,170 --> 00:07:51,010 But that doesn't mean Nasiru Abdullahi, who is a little bit nasty because Raila has actually done that whenever he has lost. 59 00:07:51,010 --> 00:07:55,600 You have gone to court a day. 60 00:07:55,600 --> 00:08:00,310 There were costs involved in this case that were cost of life. 61 00:08:00,310 --> 00:08:07,650 I mean, Masondo, the I.T. manager of the Electoral Commission, was killed some days before the election. 62 00:08:07,650 --> 00:08:23,230 A, there is a tension there between wealth, health and power that is always difficult in Kenya, and you had forms that were key to prove the results. 63 00:08:23,230 --> 00:08:32,320 The famous 34a that were never saved, at least in their totality, or they were never recorded as they should have been recorded. 64 00:08:32,320 --> 00:08:36,760 There were structural problems in the way they or rather radical problems, 65 00:08:36,760 --> 00:08:41,770 in the way the forms were recorded and transmitted the transmission process. 66 00:08:41,770 --> 00:08:51,610 I mean, a third of them could not be found could not be traced. So the dispute takes place and the election again. 67 00:08:51,610 --> 00:08:58,810 The expectations of everybody, including including Raila himself, are declared null and void. 68 00:08:58,810 --> 00:09:05,510 I mean, the declaration of results did not happen and the court order for these fresh elections, 69 00:09:05,510 --> 00:09:17,650 they are two aim dissenting opinions against the four judges that nullified voting for the nullification of elections. 70 00:09:17,650 --> 00:09:25,180 There were the opinions of some joking the Moon and Justice JB or Zhuang in debut. 71 00:09:25,180 --> 00:09:33,000 Which one was fighting for the lawyers to be just lawyers? 72 00:09:33,000 --> 00:09:37,240 They you really call mind of a judge applies to the law. 73 00:09:37,240 --> 00:09:43,400 So where in the law do you find the justification to nullify the elections? 74 00:09:43,400 --> 00:09:49,210 A Well, Judge Thomas Joni's is very much, you could say, 75 00:09:49,210 --> 00:10:00,670 a I hasten legalistic mind that perhaps the not one to resist looking at the context of what was happening. 76 00:10:00,670 --> 00:10:04,510 And he said, Well, no, according to the law, 77 00:10:04,510 --> 00:10:13,660 I don't find sufficient that threshold of evidence we are requiring here is not made for an ification because you 78 00:10:13,660 --> 00:10:23,290 have that usual dispute between the aim and the how call the balance of probabilities or beyond reasonable doubt. 79 00:10:23,290 --> 00:10:26,170 Then where do you go from 50 to 90 percent? 80 00:10:26,170 --> 00:10:34,870 Do you place yourself somewhere on 75 percent, which is what the court had said before four cases of of elections, which are never perfect. 81 00:10:34,870 --> 00:10:38,800 So how imperfect should not? Should an election be to be nullified? 82 00:10:38,800 --> 00:10:50,920 And how should that imperfection eh, give you a hint of the results not being genuine, then a joke in the movie was much more practical. 83 00:10:50,920 --> 00:10:57,880 She was an activist before joining the court, and she said, Look, we are electing here six people. 84 00:10:57,880 --> 00:11:05,510 Everybody was voting for a candidate for president in the Senate by a National Assembly, 85 00:11:05,510 --> 00:11:12,570 a county assembly, women representative, etc. So if you if you. 86 00:11:12,570 --> 00:11:14,460 The election of the president, 87 00:11:14,460 --> 00:11:24,510 you have to nullify your election to the other six people in a way is a very interesting point you brought up in her 900 page decision, 88 00:11:24,510 --> 00:11:33,060 which she wrote within six days. So then, of course, what happened? 89 00:11:33,060 --> 00:11:43,110 The court decided to nullify the result. But on the court to declare a hero, et cetera, et cetera, the Chief Justice became a hero. 90 00:11:43,110 --> 00:11:53,520 And two months later, they couldn't nullify an election, which was far more imperfect a that of the second election. 91 00:11:53,520 --> 00:12:01,110 We had a fresh election in November. A biko's in it. 92 00:12:01,110 --> 00:12:10,770 Certainly, they will have to run the country into total disarray. So you say, well, here you have the perfect tension between law and politics. 93 00:12:10,770 --> 00:12:15,630 United defy an election which has some imperfection, which was measurable. 94 00:12:15,630 --> 00:12:19,680 And I believe the imperfections who are substantial. 95 00:12:19,680 --> 00:12:31,380 But you need not nullify an election that was far more imperfect because you did not know what to do in that second case. 96 00:12:31,380 --> 00:12:34,320 I mean, as soon as you nullified the election, Raila said. 97 00:12:34,320 --> 00:12:41,340 I don't believe in the electoral commission, but the president could do nothing because he's holding those interim powers. 98 00:12:41,340 --> 00:12:51,240 I mean, he's the the president doesn't have power appoint anyone at that moment and Deng who is going to appoint these new electoral commission. 99 00:12:51,240 --> 00:12:56,580 So you get into a constitutional crisis that had been pushed by a political crisis. 100 00:12:56,580 --> 00:13:07,170 But anyway, that belongs more to the soul. Well, that's how we find ourselves in in this tension of fresh elections, new elections, 101 00:13:07,170 --> 00:13:15,180 declaration of results, whole elections not only by their first two presidential elections. 102 00:13:15,180 --> 00:13:20,160 The court have jurisdiction or the obligation of nullifying the whole election process. 103 00:13:20,160 --> 00:13:23,700 Or should every governor have asked for it. 104 00:13:23,700 --> 00:13:32,190 I mean, all those are a intricacies that we are learning with the process because really it's a whole new process. 105 00:13:32,190 --> 00:13:41,730 Well, I will leave it there because seeing it, you know, awaiting a lawyer with a microphone and a willing audience can talk for these. 106 00:13:41,730 --> 00:13:47,910 And I, I think money can tell us a lot more interesting things about the context. 107 00:13:47,910 --> 00:13:55,260 So if I welcome you to speak, we have. This has been hailed as the first of its kind in contemporary history of Africa. 108 00:13:55,260 --> 00:14:01,650 What factors put together made this happen in Kenya, the way you did and when it did? 109 00:14:01,650 --> 00:14:09,900 Look at the way it did. Can it come at the end of. 110 00:14:09,900 --> 00:14:18,350 Oh, it's hard to speak about these elections, and I kept telling my my mentor here, Professor Louis, 111 00:14:18,350 --> 00:14:26,160 I would just pick about an election horse, but a court decision that you know, a bit more than just the decision itself. 112 00:14:26,160 --> 00:14:33,600 It's very hard, I think. But I want to say that elections that have been evolving. 113 00:14:33,600 --> 00:14:40,980 I remember as a small boy witnessing the longer elections in 1988 no longer means a coup, 114 00:14:40,980 --> 00:14:45,240 and it's actually for curiously a queue behind someone and the other one and the other one. 115 00:14:45,240 --> 00:14:50,220 And there's a picture of your candidate in front. I saw it and it was very violent. 116 00:14:50,220 --> 00:14:57,300 And the picture would shift. So you begin thinking you're queuing for money. 117 00:14:57,300 --> 00:15:06,540 Then in between the elections. Somebody else who did the queue and the money is safe today so that it was very violent. 118 00:15:06,540 --> 00:15:14,490 We move it to the next level. And there were a lot of challenges, for example, between the elections to be conducted in the polling stations. 119 00:15:14,490 --> 00:15:22,380 Tallying is not done, the accountings are down, they're sticking to another station and in between is carried by police officers and 120 00:15:22,380 --> 00:15:27,360 government officers who ordinarily were instructed to do something to eat the ballots. 121 00:15:27,360 --> 00:15:35,580 So the integrity of the process was really messed up and we have been fighting for reforms since those days. 122 00:15:35,580 --> 00:15:36,540 The other reforms have been, of course, 123 00:15:36,540 --> 00:15:44,610 in the areas of the electoral management body itself from a very government controlled electoral management body to a very independent, 124 00:15:44,610 --> 00:15:52,800 at least independent. And of course, I'm speaking at this point again towards the end of 2000 and suddenly a very independent 125 00:15:52,800 --> 00:16:01,470 one after after the 2010 Constitution in terms of managing the ballot itself, 126 00:16:01,470 --> 00:16:09,570 you know, and the vote itself. You'll be surprised that I think that Kenya's electoral process is the most secure in the world. 127 00:16:09,570 --> 00:16:17,430 I'm open to get from you if you are this more is more protected than I was. 128 00:16:17,430 --> 00:16:23,040 I could describe that. I think it less than a minute. What happens in is voting takes place, 129 00:16:23,040 --> 00:16:30,180 a place in a polling station and we have around forty thousand eight hundred of them, the country in the polling station. 130 00:16:30,180 --> 00:16:35,730 Every political party has agents and everyone can witness that. 131 00:16:35,730 --> 00:16:39,180 So your vote and the tallying happens there. 132 00:16:39,180 --> 00:16:48,390 It's recorded in a form what you hear from that before that form is signed by all the agents and every political party is given a copy. 133 00:16:48,390 --> 00:16:56,250 Towards the end, the last reforms is that that form is can't put an electoral system called Kym's can 134 00:16:56,250 --> 00:17:00,870 the integrated electoral management systems and send to the headquarters directly. 135 00:17:00,870 --> 00:17:07,640 No one can tamper with that. So the results are tamper proof actually both electronically and manually. 136 00:17:07,640 --> 00:17:13,590 Then they move again to the constituency and they are tallied there and another form from that, it will be made at that point. 137 00:17:13,590 --> 00:17:18,510 And again, the same system happens. So it's actually impossible to see like an election. 138 00:17:18,510 --> 00:17:27,180 You cannot steal it. You can only break into it. It must be a burglary, an act of burglary, and everyone will see you doing that. 139 00:17:27,180 --> 00:17:30,780 But it has still been possible to do it. That's the amazing part. 140 00:17:30,780 --> 00:17:38,550 Actually, it has been possible to steal an election. As ridiculous as that, I can't imagine another country without a rigorous process. 141 00:17:38,550 --> 00:17:45,300 And I think the question that that one might want to ask is, how has it been possible to do that? 142 00:17:45,300 --> 00:17:53,430 How has it been possible that when everybody think cameras, everybody has the result, but you can still there? 143 00:17:53,430 --> 00:18:00,690 Give us a different result. The answer for me, I think, is very simple and especially for those who were here yesterday. 144 00:18:00,690 --> 00:18:05,670 It's very simple. There's nothing like a set down. 145 00:18:05,670 --> 00:18:19,350 There's no state in Kenya, the best you have is a consideration of several nations that are very loosely put together and that are this central place. 146 00:18:19,350 --> 00:18:22,470 The rule of law does not stand. 147 00:18:22,470 --> 00:18:31,320 I could be speaking for Africa a lot, but it's also true about Kenya that we don't care so much about debt or the country. 148 00:18:31,320 --> 00:18:36,930 We have our small nationalities and the origin of this comes from the colonial epoch. 149 00:18:36,930 --> 00:18:39,030 And for those of you who are interested, 150 00:18:39,030 --> 00:18:46,590 you could look at the moment and is the citizen on the subject and you would see how we were citizens and subjects at the same time. 151 00:18:46,590 --> 00:18:56,940 And then and there was a tradition of minority settlers by white settlers that lived in a civil society, sort of. 152 00:18:56,940 --> 00:19:01,890 And the majority of the Africans that then lived in the native reserves. 153 00:19:01,890 --> 00:19:09,540 And because they are majority, they are also divided in small and of course, around ethnicity. 154 00:19:09,540 --> 00:19:12,750 Or they refused to call ethnic or tribal equality nationalities. 155 00:19:12,750 --> 00:19:19,580 I think that communities of nations and those nations then were never allowed to work together. 156 00:19:19,580 --> 00:19:28,310 And meanwhile, all they see from the state is oppression, harassment, early nation, land grabbing and all those kind of things. 157 00:19:28,310 --> 00:19:35,650 So the threat to them is a foreign concept. The only few Africans read about this new state of the world who come to work, 158 00:19:35,650 --> 00:19:43,510 they in urban areas and eventually the leads that take over the state and their experience of the state is that it oppresses. 159 00:19:43,510 --> 00:19:52,930 It's not part of the people. It's not meant work for them. And so the culture of impunity takes over the country from the 1960s. 160 00:19:52,930 --> 00:20:00,070 We have assassinations, you know, unexplained massacres, looting, corruption, land grabbing, all those kind of things. 161 00:20:00,070 --> 00:20:09,850 We can think about what is left to the local, said Gupta. We began experiencing that quite early, so that is the kind of state we have nurtured. 162 00:20:09,850 --> 00:20:14,680 And how do the people look at this state and look at it as an enemy? That tends to be the thing. 163 00:20:14,680 --> 00:20:17,440 And they come together as communities, you know, 164 00:20:17,440 --> 00:20:27,310 as nations thinking that they can grab something at that centre of political power and that they want to use somebody that comes out of their leader. 165 00:20:27,310 --> 00:20:32,260 And that will be, say, Kenyatta, maybe I'm sorry to say this, but for the Kikuyu over there, Northern Ireland, 166 00:20:32,260 --> 00:20:39,250 every community is looking for a king looking for Goliath to go and fight for them, and that's always walking at this stage. 167 00:20:39,250 --> 00:20:47,120 So how that turns out. Therefore, the national level is that the ballot is not an individual vote, it's a corporate vote. 168 00:20:47,120 --> 00:20:51,580 And you can know how connect is much better than me in this. 169 00:20:51,580 --> 00:21:00,730 You can know how much you can get in an election. The scientific consensus Raila knows how much it can get. 170 00:21:00,730 --> 00:21:04,850 My guess is that he knows he can't win. Who knows how much is it going to get? 171 00:21:04,850 --> 00:21:07,840 And my guess is that he knows it can't go beyond what he got. 172 00:21:07,840 --> 00:21:13,900 And so we must just keep inflating a few things here and there and does the problem that then we have. 173 00:21:13,900 --> 00:21:22,030 And behind them are nations that think that this leaders support or stand for a certain ideal that they they believe in. 174 00:21:22,030 --> 00:21:27,850 And so the conflict begins. This conflict has several battle fronts. 175 00:21:27,850 --> 00:21:33,070 I have a lot of time again so I can take my time. But this conflict has several battle forms. 176 00:21:33,070 --> 00:21:40,780 Part of it is just violence. We had the panel here talking about the International Criminal Court, just violence. 177 00:21:40,780 --> 00:21:50,140 Part of it could just be the the the politics in the streets could just be in the in the public appointments, 178 00:21:50,140 --> 00:21:57,820 which community gets, what's that kind of thing? But eventually, when everything has come to an end, 179 00:21:57,820 --> 00:22:01,660 that battle must be decided at the ballot because whoever takes the reins of 180 00:22:01,660 --> 00:22:06,820 the state can therefore control the state and probably benefit its own people. 181 00:22:06,820 --> 00:22:15,190 It's a myth. We haven't done a scientific study yet to know whether you'll benefit if your leader is in power more than the other communities. 182 00:22:15,190 --> 00:22:22,600 It's a study that we need to do, probably more scientifically. But the perception amongst the people of Kenya is that if one of your own and 183 00:22:22,600 --> 00:22:27,130 your own must be a member of your community takes over the reins of power, 184 00:22:27,130 --> 00:22:33,050 then you are safe. So small tribes have to work with the bigger ones, the amazing tribes loosely, 185 00:22:33,050 --> 00:22:41,000 but the communities they work together and then try to to fight the other ones, you know, and that kind of thing. 186 00:22:41,000 --> 00:22:45,590 And so when they come to the court, they're not looking for justice. 187 00:22:45,590 --> 00:22:52,700 Trust me. So whatever the judges say, it doesn't make sense to me because I understand what people are looking for. 188 00:22:52,700 --> 00:23:01,370 And that's why before the legal right also that when the court nullifies this side complains when it's nothing like if I decide complaints again, 189 00:23:01,370 --> 00:23:08,030 it is the same size, same points, but they complain because they didn't rule for us and rule for us that we must win. 190 00:23:08,030 --> 00:23:14,310 This battle is an international conflict. In other words, it is not an election dispute. 191 00:23:14,310 --> 00:23:18,920 Another context which I want us to understand this Kenyan politics. 192 00:23:18,920 --> 00:23:30,050 And so what happened in 2017, therefore, was that international conflict coming before judges who are also equally human judges born in Kenya? 193 00:23:30,050 --> 00:23:38,270 All of them, actually. They live in a time with interest Kenyans when making commissions and would appoint a mixture. 194 00:23:38,270 --> 00:23:42,000 And that's how, for example, in curricula from South Africa came to help. 195 00:23:42,000 --> 00:23:50,330 They discussed elections, but in the Supreme Court, it's now entirely Kenyan, and the judges are members of these nationalities. 196 00:23:50,330 --> 00:23:56,660 And I can tell you for free that I think that most of the judges took sides as well. 197 00:23:56,660 --> 00:24:03,110 Look, I tell you for free that the president knew the outcome of the election before the Election Day. 198 00:24:03,110 --> 00:24:07,650 How do you know this is another list of this in Kenya? 199 00:24:07,650 --> 00:24:13,370 But I can tell you that the president did not show up in court or any of his members on the day of the verdict. 200 00:24:13,370 --> 00:24:18,500 How did he know? And at that point already knew that the election would be notified? 201 00:24:18,500 --> 00:24:25,610 How did they know and how did they know that he has one or the other side because they showed up with the entire team? 202 00:24:25,610 --> 00:24:28,280 They were very happy and positive. 203 00:24:28,280 --> 00:24:34,520 So it tells you that even the judiciary people are checking for ways the member of my tribe or the one that is sympathetic to us, 204 00:24:34,520 --> 00:24:41,780 who can then rule for us this way. And and so the battle that went to the court was a conflict that the court could not 205 00:24:41,780 --> 00:24:47,840 determine it was beyond them and whatever decision they going to make was headed nowhere. 206 00:24:47,840 --> 00:24:55,460 So how do I end this and I hope I can come back to this during question time? And this by saying that the court was given an impossible mission. 207 00:24:55,460 --> 00:25:02,690 Is that a mission normally achieved by courts? It is bound to fail, and it failed terribly badly. 208 00:25:02,690 --> 00:25:10,550 If you want to know how, just check quick Google search there was no repeat election didn't take off. 209 00:25:10,550 --> 00:25:15,410 And as we speak, Raila Odinga and Uhuru Kenyatta are working together as friends. 210 00:25:15,410 --> 00:25:21,110 Thank you. It's as if I predicted what you are going to talk about so you can see what's up. 211 00:25:21,110 --> 00:25:29,260 And I think this is a good time to bring in Nick and to give us a bit of the repercussions of this decision is what happened and where are we now? 212 00:25:29,260 --> 00:25:33,020 What is going to happen to the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and the decisions 213 00:25:33,020 --> 00:25:38,720 that will be made in the future given the two years that have gone by? Thank you very much. 214 00:25:38,720 --> 00:25:45,380 I'm very tempted to start talking about how you could rig even a perfect election following my book last year called How to Book an Election. 215 00:25:45,380 --> 00:25:52,190 But I'm not going to do that. I'm going to stay on topic, and I'm going to follow the suggestion that we had earlier that, 216 00:25:52,190 --> 00:25:56,910 you know, maybe we're leaving the law behind a little bit too much in some discussion. 217 00:25:56,910 --> 00:26:02,870 So I'm going to take us back to the law and I'm going to router's in precedents two different types of precedents. 218 00:26:02,870 --> 00:26:04,970 I think one of things that we haven't said yet, 219 00:26:04,970 --> 00:26:13,400 it's really important is that the 2017 verdict came after the 2013 verdict, which had set a legal precedent. 220 00:26:13,400 --> 00:26:18,500 And one of the things the Supreme Court did in 2017 was reject that precedent. 221 00:26:18,500 --> 00:26:21,890 The precedent in 2013, if I could sum it up very briefly, 222 00:26:21,890 --> 00:26:28,760 was if you can show that an elections result was changed through the rigging, then you don't overturn the verdict. 223 00:26:28,760 --> 00:26:32,840 This is effectively what all international observers do they think about. 224 00:26:32,840 --> 00:26:40,610 Not just was the process good or bad, but what the outcome probably changed that seemed to be at the heart of the understanding. 225 00:26:40,610 --> 00:26:45,620 It's a very long verdict, but the heart of the understanding in 2013. In 2017, 226 00:26:45,620 --> 00:26:55,730 under a different Supreme Court chief justice who had been personally responsible for some of the electoral processes of the judiciary in 2013, 227 00:26:55,730 --> 00:26:59,540 a very different process of jurisprudence was important. 228 00:26:59,540 --> 00:27:05,090 And effectively, what that court did was decide that it was going to protect the Constitution, 229 00:27:05,090 --> 00:27:12,380 and its fundamental role was to protect the Constitution. And if you talk to the Chief Justice and hear him explain his decision, 230 00:27:12,380 --> 00:27:16,880 he will explain it as a way of defending the legal system in the Constitution 231 00:27:16,880 --> 00:27:22,550 and the process of the election was not legal irrespective of the result. 232 00:27:22,550 --> 00:27:28,110 And so the critical difference in 2017 was that the court asserted the right to reject an election. 233 00:27:28,110 --> 00:27:37,200 Even if the result could not be shown to have been changed by the manipulation, the process had to meet a certain standard. 234 00:27:37,200 --> 00:27:42,000 My belief is that one of the reasons that changes is because the Chief Justice changes. 235 00:27:42,000 --> 00:27:47,400 But another thing that I found out in interviews with people who sat on the committee of the Judiciary that 236 00:27:47,400 --> 00:27:53,850 handle electoral matters is that they had actually had training from lawyers from various parts of the continent, 237 00:27:53,850 --> 00:27:56,760 including a very influential figure from Ghana. 238 00:27:56,760 --> 00:28:04,230 And the part of that training had stressed to them that they didn't have to be able to show that an election had been won by the wrong person. 239 00:28:04,230 --> 00:28:11,850 To be able to say that that election didn't meet an appropriate standard and that that was at the back of their mind when they went into this process. 240 00:28:11,850 --> 00:28:14,820 So I think we have a very different type of decision. 241 00:28:14,820 --> 00:28:20,880 It's a much more radical decision made the decision that you can nullify an election, even if you don't know who wins, 242 00:28:20,880 --> 00:28:28,680 is actually really radical because it means that you don't actually have to have that much evidence to do it if you wanted to. 243 00:28:28,680 --> 00:28:33,420 It also has significant implications for future elections. 244 00:28:33,420 --> 00:28:44,100 But here, I slightly disagree with one of the previous speakers because I'm not sure that the 2017 rerun election was far more imperfect. 245 00:28:44,100 --> 00:28:52,080 And the reason I say that is that there are a number of reasons that went into the 2017 election verdict first time now. 246 00:28:52,080 --> 00:28:59,160 One of those was that we didn't have all of the forms that were supposed to have been in and copies our versions of them, 247 00:28:59,160 --> 00:29:04,200 and therefore there was accusations by the opposition that those were the forms that were used to rig the election. 248 00:29:04,200 --> 00:29:08,070 That doesn't seem particularly plausible, but that was the argument that was being made. 249 00:29:08,070 --> 00:29:17,040 Another was that the ABC refused to give access to its service once it was requested by the courts in the process of the decision itself, 250 00:29:17,040 --> 00:29:22,410 and that that lack of transparency counted against the ABC and the official result. 251 00:29:22,410 --> 00:29:29,370 There were others also relating to the process of the ABC that day by the time of the rerun. 252 00:29:29,370 --> 00:29:32,400 Most of the ABC's process worked better. 253 00:29:32,400 --> 00:29:40,380 The problem of forms not making it in and the scandals not being able to be received was resolved by the rerun election. 254 00:29:40,380 --> 00:29:44,370 Now you can argue it was resolved precisely because the opposition candidate had 255 00:29:44,370 --> 00:29:50,280 dropped out of the race and therefore the president was going to win by a landslide, so it didn't matter if the process worked perfectly. 256 00:29:50,280 --> 00:29:54,250 But the process did work better. So from the court's point of view, 257 00:29:54,250 --> 00:30:01,530 the second election was a better quality election in terms of the procedural processes that were supposed to be followed. 258 00:30:01,530 --> 00:30:03,960 It conformed more to the law. 259 00:30:03,960 --> 00:30:10,770 It was a less perfect election in that Raila Odinga boycotted it and that there was violence around the election in opposition strongholds, 260 00:30:10,770 --> 00:30:18,600 parts of Kisumu, parts of Kibera, where opposition supporters tried to prevent people from voting, hoping that that would void the election. 261 00:30:18,600 --> 00:30:24,060 But that decision of Raila to boycott was his decision, and it didn't make the election illegal. 262 00:30:24,060 --> 00:30:30,090 And the fact that he refused to contest wasn't the fault of the ABC. So in my opinion, 263 00:30:30,090 --> 00:30:38,100 the the Supreme Court's decision was reasonably consistent in that the first election was poor quality on procedural grounds in the second. 264 00:30:38,100 --> 00:30:43,050 And therefore, I think it was perhaps consistent as well as political. 265 00:30:43,050 --> 00:30:47,760 Let me now talk about the political process and a different kind of precedents. 266 00:30:47,760 --> 00:30:52,530 One of the things that happened when we had this decision was that there was a wave 267 00:30:52,530 --> 00:30:56,670 of speculation in the media that we would see a judicial activism across Africa. 268 00:30:56,670 --> 00:31:02,520 This would be the thing that you the that would set off the fireworks and all of a sudden across the continent, 269 00:31:02,520 --> 00:31:07,860 judges would start to turn down elections and decide against presidents. 270 00:31:07,860 --> 00:31:14,940 And of course, those of us who've been watching Africa politics for any length of time knew that this was unlikely for a number of reasons, 271 00:31:14,940 --> 00:31:23,910 one of which was that very, very quickly we saw presidents across the continent warn judges of what would happen if they did this. 272 00:31:23,910 --> 00:31:28,020 We actually saw two or three countries where presidents immediately took steps to undermine 273 00:31:28,020 --> 00:31:32,250 judicial independence in the lead up to elections that were coming the next year. 274 00:31:32,250 --> 00:31:33,450 We also know, of course, 275 00:31:33,450 --> 00:31:39,870 that there were not that many countries in sub-Saharan Africa where the judiciary has the quality of independence that it does in Kenya. 276 00:31:39,870 --> 00:31:47,220 And one of the things that the elections really did demonstrate to us was the extent of independence of the Supreme Court. 277 00:31:47,220 --> 00:31:54,720 The final reason, I think, why we shouldn't expect this wave of judicial activism to necessarily be triggered by this decision is what's 278 00:31:54,720 --> 00:32:00,660 actually happened to the Kenyan Supreme Court and the Kenyan judiciary since the election decision was made. 279 00:32:00,660 --> 00:32:06,960 So I'm going to talk about three different things that have happened since 2017. 280 00:32:06,960 --> 00:32:12,690 One relates to the way that the decision was misunderstood and the implications of that in Kenyan politics. 281 00:32:12,690 --> 00:32:20,070 The second relates to the way that the decision put the Supreme Court itself in the firing line this process of digitalisation. 282 00:32:20,070 --> 00:32:24,390 And the third relates to the fact that the Supreme Court quickly realised that it 283 00:32:24,390 --> 00:32:28,760 did not have the mechanisms to solve the problems that it itself had identified. 284 00:32:28,760 --> 00:32:36,440 So very quickly on the first one, a lot of opposition supporters took the decision to mean that Raila Odinga had won more votes. 285 00:32:36,440 --> 00:32:39,620 If you talk to the Supreme Court, this was exactly not what they were saying. 286 00:32:39,620 --> 00:32:46,910 They were saying they did not know who had won and because the process was illegal, they had nullified the process to have a rerun election. 287 00:32:46,910 --> 00:32:49,250 But in opposition strongholds for good reasons, 288 00:32:49,250 --> 00:32:53,990 people interpreted this to mean that the opposition had won and not just that it had won this election, 289 00:32:53,990 --> 00:32:58,550 but that it really won all the previous elections that they believe that they had been rigged out of. 290 00:32:58,550 --> 00:33:00,240 So in that sense, the election, 291 00:33:00,240 --> 00:33:07,760 the decision was seen to legitimate a certain argument about what is happening Kenyan politics over the previous 20 years. 292 00:33:07,760 --> 00:33:13,160 And that plays into them the willingness of some of those communities to be very 293 00:33:13,160 --> 00:33:18,890 critical and sceptical of future electoral processes and of the government in general. 294 00:33:18,890 --> 00:33:23,630 I'm not saying I should say that the elections were rigged or the previous elections were just trying to 295 00:33:23,630 --> 00:33:29,150 point out that the Supreme Court's verdict itself doesn't state that the opposition won the election, 296 00:33:29,150 --> 00:33:33,740 but that's not always fully understood when you talk to people on the ground in my experience. 297 00:33:33,740 --> 00:33:41,810 Second, in the run up to the judgement and the days after and senior judges have shown me this, they were sent images of guns to their mobile phones. 298 00:33:41,810 --> 00:33:48,740 They received threats of death on an almost daily basis on WhatsApp, on other social media platforms. 299 00:33:48,740 --> 00:33:54,200 There was a terrible incident in which there was a fire somebody shot at the deputy cop. 300 00:33:54,200 --> 00:33:59,330 Partly, it seemed as an attempt to prevent the Supreme Court from changing the dates of the rerun 301 00:33:59,330 --> 00:34:05,330 election and to intimidate the court into being more acquiescing to the government's wishes. 302 00:34:05,330 --> 00:34:09,410 There were moves to push legislation through parliament ahead of the election to actually 303 00:34:09,410 --> 00:34:15,560 circumscribed the Supreme Court's authority when it comes to dessert deciding electoral issues. 304 00:34:15,560 --> 00:34:22,820 There was a speech made by Kenyatta very shortly afterwards in which he said a number of slanderous things about the judges. 305 00:34:22,820 --> 00:34:26,660 There were a number of comments by members of the government in the two or three weeks 306 00:34:26,660 --> 00:34:31,670 afterwards that implied that the Supreme Court would be fixed at some point in the future. 307 00:34:31,670 --> 00:34:38,750 So judges found themselves very fundamentally in the firing line in a way that became very difficult and dangerous for them, 308 00:34:38,750 --> 00:34:45,170 and they didn't back down. But there can be no doubt that they really understood and felt the force of the political decision 309 00:34:45,170 --> 00:34:50,390 that they'd made and understood very quickly what a dangerous position they were now in. 310 00:34:50,390 --> 00:34:58,310 Finally, I think the Supreme Court very quickly became quite frustrated with the situation they had nullified the election in some cases. 311 00:34:58,310 --> 00:35:03,650 I think if you talk to the judges believing that there was going to be a significant transformation, 312 00:35:03,650 --> 00:35:08,690 that the electoral commission would be able to make improvements that while everything I would contest that we 313 00:35:08,690 --> 00:35:13,490 would have a more legitimate second round that that would be good for the country in terms of national unity. 314 00:35:13,490 --> 00:35:16,610 And this would set an important legal precedent that would take us forwards. 315 00:35:16,610 --> 00:35:23,210 And the ABC would have to do a better job with transparency in the future. And yet, as we know, the court has no purse. 316 00:35:23,210 --> 00:35:27,890 It has no soul. It has no capacity or no authority over the electoral commission. 317 00:35:27,890 --> 00:35:36,920 It was unable and in some ways, quite rightly, to specify the changes that the ABC needed to make in order to have a legal election. 318 00:35:36,920 --> 00:35:40,940 It was not able to say, for example, whether or not electoral technology should be used. 319 00:35:40,940 --> 00:35:44,090 The same technology should be used exactly how it should be used. 320 00:35:44,090 --> 00:35:49,100 And the limited time between that election and the next election meant that it was always going 321 00:35:49,100 --> 00:35:54,470 to be implausible to solve really fundamental issues with the political and electoral culture. 322 00:35:54,470 --> 00:36:01,580 As a result, Raila Odinga boycotted the election on the second election, ended up in many people's eyes, being no more legitimate than the first. 323 00:36:01,580 --> 00:36:09,890 So now we have a Supreme Court sitting today who, on the one hand, have made this world leading precedent setting decision. 324 00:36:09,890 --> 00:36:16,940 But on the other hand, rumour has it a little bit unhappy that they made it and the way it played out. 325 00:36:16,940 --> 00:36:24,500 Some people have even suggested that they might make a different decision if they had been asked to, you know, today with the benefit of hindsight. 326 00:36:24,500 --> 00:36:30,890 What are the pros? I think the proof is that the court has survived. There have not been any direct attempts on the court. 327 00:36:30,890 --> 00:36:34,730 There have not been any further shooting incidents against judges. 328 00:36:34,730 --> 00:36:43,010 We have seen the court pull through, albeit wounded, and that shows that the court can be independent and survive the political onslaught. 329 00:36:43,010 --> 00:36:50,810 But I think the downside of this in terms of the sort of informal precedent if we think about it that way rather than the legal precedent, 330 00:36:50,810 --> 00:36:58,190 is that in many ways, this experience might have made the Supreme Court less likely to take as equally a difficult decision in the future. 331 00:36:58,190 --> 00:37:05,930 And actually, in some ways, the long term implications in Kenya might be a less activist Supreme Court rather than emboldening judicial activism. 332 00:37:05,930 --> 00:37:11,090 Thank you. Thank you very much. Really interesting insights from open corners and some of the interesting things that 333 00:37:11,090 --> 00:37:17,090 are happening now is that the parliament cut off almost by half the judiciary budget, 334 00:37:17,090 --> 00:37:23,870 only to reverse it to a day ago with something just to prove who has the muscle as it were. 335 00:37:23,870 --> 00:37:27,920 So I think I'd like to invite the panellists to kind of give the. 336 00:37:27,920 --> 00:37:33,890 Feedback on what has happened and was was the second was the rerun legal? 337 00:37:33,890 --> 00:37:42,140 What do you see? The virtue of Nick is that he can explain complex realities in in just a paragraph in. 338 00:37:42,140 --> 00:37:49,830 And I think he spoke more like a lawyer, and I was speaking more like us political scientists who say, yes, he destroyed. 339 00:37:49,830 --> 00:37:55,190 It was it was more legal and those errors were not there. 340 00:37:55,190 --> 00:38:07,280 But from the social point of view, we perceive it was not really legitimate, meaning Rila misinterpreted or miscalculated, he steps. 341 00:38:07,280 --> 00:38:12,380 He said, I am withdrawing because if I withdraw, then you cannot have the election. 342 00:38:12,380 --> 00:38:21,740 But the court the very same day or they before or after, I don't remember they gave you the possibility of our court to participate in the election. 343 00:38:21,740 --> 00:38:26,030 So who do of know the only candidate and the election went ahead? 344 00:38:26,030 --> 00:38:32,300 Of course, I visited several voting polling stations on that day and the window. 345 00:38:32,300 --> 00:38:36,410 So OK, only very few voted. We don't know. 346 00:38:36,410 --> 00:38:41,090 Well, I don't know if those numbers perhaps, you know, if those numbers were more or less accurate. 347 00:38:41,090 --> 00:38:47,330 But certainly, I mean, who who was going to win by 98 percent of the vote, and that's more difficult to get done. 348 00:38:47,330 --> 00:38:48,890 But from the social point of view, 349 00:38:48,890 --> 00:39:00,860 we perceived that the election was not really legitimate and was the way of legitimising something that was going to happen anyway, so to speak. 350 00:39:00,860 --> 00:39:08,360 So, yeah, I think just simply that. So, John, in the context of the BVI, 351 00:39:08,360 --> 00:39:14,620 the Building Bridges initiative at this micro nation still going to be playing out in the in the next election cycles, 352 00:39:14,620 --> 00:39:22,300 are we going to see the Supreme Court and other courts being less involved in the kind of aggressions between the micro nations? 353 00:39:22,300 --> 00:39:28,660 Yeah, I think you remember I didn't even answer your first question. 354 00:39:28,660 --> 00:39:34,900 There are these macro issues are still the still compete. The competition is still there. 355 00:39:34,900 --> 00:39:39,160 I must, however, confess that Kenya has been evolving almost forward. 356 00:39:39,160 --> 00:39:43,000 If you asked me, it's been moving very much forward in terms of reforms. 357 00:39:43,000 --> 00:39:49,000 And if you if you stick to the democracy, you know the language of democracy. 358 00:39:49,000 --> 00:39:50,620 Elections have been becoming better. 359 00:39:50,620 --> 00:39:57,610 In fact, I am convinced that apart from the presidential elections, all the other elections are done with integrity. 360 00:39:57,610 --> 00:40:03,490 And I think you can win an election fairly by just campaigning all the other positions. 361 00:40:03,490 --> 00:40:11,650 The only position that is still problematic is the presidential, because that's where the stakes are. 362 00:40:11,650 --> 00:40:17,410 I'm convinced, therefore, if I was to answer the first question before I come to second, I'm convinced, therefore, 363 00:40:17,410 --> 00:40:22,150 that what has changed in Kenya is that there has been some reforms in society, 364 00:40:22,150 --> 00:40:26,590 some gentle understanding that other nationalities we can work with these rules. 365 00:40:26,590 --> 00:40:31,630 And that is still happening, but not fully. And the complaint to the earlier presentation, 366 00:40:31,630 --> 00:40:41,410 my earlier statements was that we had expected the court to resolve underlying problems when society had not ripened for that. 367 00:40:41,410 --> 00:40:46,150 But society has ripened for all the other elections so far except the presidential election. 368 00:40:46,150 --> 00:40:50,050 I believe the judiciary is as strong as the executive wants them to be. 369 00:40:50,050 --> 00:40:54,550 That's my position. And so the judiciary in Kenya has reached a stage where it can question many things. 370 00:40:54,550 --> 00:40:59,230 And of course, my state can now even dare council opposition election. 371 00:40:59,230 --> 00:41:06,880 I think we have that level. So the second question, though, that you ask about nationalities and where they are. 372 00:41:06,880 --> 00:41:12,490 I think less notice in Kenya have sufficient consensus on many things now. 373 00:41:12,490 --> 00:41:20,500 Far better than many other African countries. But I'm not sure that consensus reaches the presidential election. 374 00:41:20,500 --> 00:41:28,780 If you look at the by elections in Kipre just yesterday and the violence that visited that particular polling, 375 00:41:28,780 --> 00:41:31,530 you should be able to see that we are still in danger. 376 00:41:31,530 --> 00:41:40,990 We are not very safe yet, especially because I presented the presidential ballot in 2022, in my view, in a sense, and therefore we are not safe yet. 377 00:41:40,990 --> 00:41:46,960 But I think there's some positives because all the other elections appeared to have been sorted, except this one. 378 00:41:46,960 --> 00:41:55,390 And I think we could move forward on that. On the BBC, finally, I think that the reforms are not being undertaken from below. 379 00:41:55,390 --> 00:42:00,230 I think that the reforms are informed by above power hungry politicians and I believe Israel and 380 00:42:00,230 --> 00:42:05,740 hooking up are probably the one to to do about Putin and Kenya just don't know what they want to do. 381 00:42:05,740 --> 00:42:14,070 And those might not be shared by the ordinary populations, and that might also be a problem in and of itself. 382 00:42:14,070 --> 00:42:19,160 Mm-Hmm. Mm-Hmm. So just in closing, and then we'll open up to the Q&A. 383 00:42:19,160 --> 00:42:24,430 Nick, I mean, there have been other cases of similarly to not the similar outcome in Uganda, 384 00:42:24,430 --> 00:42:29,200 in Ghana, in Cote d'Ivoire, which ended up in a whole of the international debacle. 385 00:42:29,200 --> 00:42:33,130 But what is it about the Kenyan case that actually tipped the scale in a 386 00:42:33,130 --> 00:42:38,300 different direction than what happens in most election contestations in Africa? 387 00:42:38,300 --> 00:42:46,130 I think I mean, I think a couple of things, as I was saying, I think, you know, the nature of the Supreme Court Chief Justice, 388 00:42:46,130 --> 00:42:51,770 his personal background, the determination of that court to see themselves as protecting the Constitution. 389 00:42:51,770 --> 00:42:55,670 Fundamentally, I think a number of those issues came together. 390 00:42:55,670 --> 00:42:59,450 I think it's perhaps true. I mean, some people suggested this. 391 00:42:59,450 --> 00:43:04,850 I don't have evidence for it that the the ruling party and the ABC were fairly complacent, 392 00:43:04,850 --> 00:43:11,780 that all previous election petitions had been rejected and therefore they didn't really feel they needed to try very hard with this one. 393 00:43:11,780 --> 00:43:18,020 They were quite complacent in the way they rejected the request to open up their servers and other things, and that that angered the court. 394 00:43:18,020 --> 00:43:23,660 There was a sense of contempt for the court, and the court felt that if it had accepted the election result on that basis, 395 00:43:23,660 --> 00:43:30,510 it would have kind of undermined its own authority. I think one other thing, though we haven't talked about I just wanted to put on the agenda, 396 00:43:30,510 --> 00:43:35,570 is we've had quite a narrow discussion in a sense about what it means to rig an election. 397 00:43:35,570 --> 00:43:40,610 We've talked about essentially fixing the vote at the very last minute as a result of 398 00:43:40,610 --> 00:43:45,620 problems with the technology of ballot box stuffing or simply adding zeros to numbers. 399 00:43:45,620 --> 00:43:48,620 But of course, there are lots of other problems with some of these elections. 400 00:43:48,620 --> 00:43:52,970 I mean, we have high levels of campaign expenditure, we have high levels of vote buying, 401 00:43:52,970 --> 00:44:00,890 we have intimidation, we have the assassination of the acting head of it, as you were talking about earlier. 402 00:44:00,890 --> 00:44:05,690 All of this created an atmosphere of violence around certain aspects of the campaign. 403 00:44:05,690 --> 00:44:11,370 We have, you know, media ownership, which is often problematic, not so much in Kenya, but in other countries. 404 00:44:11,370 --> 00:44:16,940 And I think one of the things that is true is that if we were to actually stretch out our understanding 405 00:44:16,940 --> 00:44:22,790 of vote rigging and manipulating elections a bit broader to encompass all of these different aspects, 406 00:44:22,790 --> 00:44:27,740 we would have very good reasons to think that, you know, there were many more problems in the election. 407 00:44:27,740 --> 00:44:33,230 And one of the things that hasn't yet happened is some of those issues haven't really yet been judicial ized. 408 00:44:33,230 --> 00:44:36,980 We very rarely see anyone prosecuted on the basis of vote buying. 409 00:44:36,980 --> 00:44:43,970 You know, we very rarely see people prosecuted on breaking campaign finance regulations where there are campaign finance regulations. 410 00:44:43,970 --> 00:44:47,060 So I think although there has been this process of judicial ization, 411 00:44:47,060 --> 00:44:53,150 it's also important to keep in mind how many abuses are simply not captured and prosecuted. 412 00:44:53,150 --> 00:45:00,110 Every single election and that also sways the election in favour, usually but not always of the ruling party. 413 00:45:00,110 --> 00:45:01,670 So we cannot guarantee success, 414 00:45:01,670 --> 00:45:08,000 but we will definitely guarantee failure if we give up on the process that they some good that came out of the case and they some good that 415 00:45:08,000 --> 00:45:17,120 can still come out of the constitutional process and the Supreme Court independence that the courts did manifest in that in that ruling. 416 00:45:17,120 --> 00:45:21,530 And we do hope that in the work that we will be doing from both ground up and 417 00:45:21,530 --> 00:45:25,310 creating societies that are more honourable to each other at the same time, 418 00:45:25,310 --> 00:45:31,790 creating the environment within which our courts can operate with more independence will definitely be what we will probably 419 00:45:31,790 --> 00:45:39,500 drive us to a safer and better electioneering process come 2020 if we do not probably have a bye elections before then. 420 00:45:39,500 --> 00:45:46,340 So if you agree with me that this was an incredibly interesting discussion, please give a round of applause to people.