Pluses1) One side of a highly polarized country feels (to a reasonable extent) heard.
2) The global community sees that Kenya has a functioning legal framework which could be good for business.
3) The judgment communicates the fact that we can't cut ourselves and indigenous organizations some slack for being sloppy.
Minuses1) We probably had the most expensive elections ever in Africa. A repeat costs us even more, money that could for example go to amelioration of drought effects.
2) Another period of economic uncertainty hurts us. If you look at regional economic acceleration, 2008 was a severe blow. That's when other countries started catching up with us.
3) This opens another can of worms including in county level elections. Also what happens when the next elections aren't 100% but mishaps do not materially affect the
binary outcome? do we keep going back to elections ad infinitum?
Michael Joseph controversially said that he didn't think he'd find someone locally able to get Kenya Airways out of the red (airlines are notoriously difficult to manage). Naikuni was touted as one of the best that Kenya has had but hardly lived up to the hype.
Hate to say this, but I've observed in my own work that we as Kenyans have a bit of way to go with regard to the highest global standards of professionalism. Not everyone, just that numbers-wise it's easier to get someone who can execute from a pool of expats or diaspora. We've showed flashes of brilliance in various areas though, so there's a lot of hope.
Truth be said, I'd be thoroughly disappointed if one my employees behaved the way Msando (RIP and may the killers be found) did, bearing in my the enormous responsibility that he held just a month to elections. I recently gave one of my employees a serious lecture because his professional attitude didn't match his (globally competitive) technical brilliance.
We haven't had too many huge fast-moving corporations that churn out managerial talent. IEBC is tough to get right to the 100% standards that we're demanding, hope we can get it right within the short time-frame stipulated.
All in all:1) I'm hoping this turns out to be the best outcome for Kenya's long term socioeconomic advancement. We need to get back to work and personally, I think exports and ICT are top priority.
2) I think it's fair to consider letting IEBC top management remain to execute the rerun. The commisioners were sworn in this year(!) and were under immense pressure, not even considering the over 60 court cases they had to endure within a period of ~ 2 months. Let's also consider that both sides of the political divide really botched their nomination processes.
What could look bad though is if any manual remedial actions IEBC took for messing up were really, really bad. Once done though, they probably need to go and we hunt for top talent like we would if headhunting for a corporation like Safaricom, and they shouldn't be sworn in half a year to elections. They should be legally shielded from political attacks too because it's not good to constantly throw out teams at the eleventh hour, leaving us to scurrying for replacements.
Akombe (if interested) could be good given her international experience though I'm not sure she has enough managerial chops.
Topic: Pluses/Minuses of Maraga Decision (Read 1433 times)