Nick Mwendwa and his Football Kenya Federation acolytes may or may not have heard of the character Prometheus. It is he, though, who said in the poem, The Masque of Pandora, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that, “Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.”
For, reason found no stool in Kandanda House as the FKF aficionado embarked on crafting elections rules that failed the test of Socrates’ wise words that the authority of the enacted law disposes well things both divine and human, and expels all injustice.
And so yesterday, the Sports Disputes Tribunal (SDT) bowing to those words took a step towards ending tragic comedy at the football house at Kasarani, Nairobi.
It came down to one aspect that the enjoined petitioners found hidden in FKF’s Electoral Code 2020, which locked out many aspirants resulting to FKF incumbents sailing unopposed in elections which the sports court also nullified, yesterday.
The killer petitioners’ prayer was that the Tribunal, “Declares that eligibility criteria Section 4 of the 2020 Electoral Code are unreasonable and designed to lock out potential aspirants and is therefore a gross violation of the principle of free and fair elections contemplated by Paragraph d of the second schedule to the Sports Act as read with article 81 of the Constitution of Kenya 2010.”
And the Tribunal, comprising the chair John Ohaga, Njeri Onyango and Mary Kimani agreed and dropped the hammer to devastating effect.
The Tribunal needed no second invitation as it duly obliged.
This was at the tail end of Ohaga’s landmark decision delivered in two hours, 35 minutes — a decision that may have ended Mwendwa’s reign at the helm of FKF, at least, for now.
Describing it as a cardinal principle of justice, Ohaga said: “The Tribunal agrees that the eligibility criteria is a limitation of the challengers’ political rights as enshrined under Article 38 of the Constitution.”
The ruling added: “No justification has been offered by FKF for the limitations introduced in the Code; and even if such limitation was justified, it would have had to be incorporated into the FKF Constitution 2017 and notified to the members and potential candidates within such period as would allow them to bring themselves within the eligibility criteria.”
It went on: “This is clearly an illegitimate barrier to candidature and fully explains why, as Mr Ouma articulated, the positions of President and vice president have only one candidate making the election effectively a coronation. There are apparently numerous other positions in which there is no contest to the candidature of the incumbent.”
SDT, however, concurred that the federation had complied fully with all decisions and orders of the SDT, but they found that Mwendwa and his National Executive Committee had outlived their term in office and they had to vacate immediately.
For, Ohaga and his team further declared: “Term of office of the NEC is at an end and a request that Fifa appoints a normalization committee for the purpose of inter alia, holding the elections of the FKF.”
It was a hammer blow that may have crushed Mwendwa to smithereens and who now, for all intents and purposes, becomes the outgoing FKF president.
Mwendwa, who was watching the proceedings via video conference at Safari Park Hotel, surrounded by his legal team and sullen lieutenants, will now have to brief Fifa on the outcome of the SDT proceedings.
In statement to media houses in the aftermath of the chastising SDT ruling, FKF CEO Barry Otieno said: “The FKF president remains in office and will continue to discharge his duties, as per the FKF constitution, this even as the federation continues to engage Fifa on the way forward.”
The incumbents, however, will have to regroup and craft a way out now that Mwendwa would have lost the privilege of ‘controlling’ the electoral process as it will be open to all.
This is a process he has been claiming to be the only candidate as were many of his protégés across the country; all who now must have to contend with opposition from all over the place.
The landmark ruling may have ended Mwendwa’s initially promising era but ultimately degenerated to an error, which he alone authored.
The elections under a normalisation Committee sought by the Sports Court may gift him another opportunity to fight for his life, if he still would harbour ambition to defend the seat he held between February 10, 2016
