The Star 01/16/2017

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission has promised to clean up the voter register as a month-long mass voter registration starts today. The IEBC targets more than six million eligible voters. Chief executive officer Ezra Chiloba yesterday said the commission will start cleaning up the register in June, 60 days to the August 8 general election. This will ensure it is free of dead and underage voters, an illegal segment the opposition has blamed for rigged elections. Chiloba said the IEBC will engage the Interior ministry’s Registration of Deaths and Births department to expunge dead voters. “Phase two of the mass voter registration kicks off on January 16 [today] up to February 14 as the commission targets to register 22 million voters before the August polls,” he said. Chiloba responded…

JACOB KAIMENYI His ministry sacks 10 over leases The Lands ministry has sent the officers on compulsory leave to allow investigations into fraudulent review and extension of land leases and tenures. They were found to have aided grabbing of land, including a plot belonging to an elderly couple in Westlands, Nairobi.The family was violently evicted and their home demolished by a private developer on December 4. See page 10 AMOS KABUTHU Cleric says he will not retire The wrangles and infighting in the African Independent Pentecostal Churches of Africa may get worse as Kabuthu, the archbishop, claims the January 9 election of a new archbishop was not credible. He said the poll at Bahati Cathedral in Nairobi was not fair or transparent. Kabuthu said he won’t leave leadership to Bishop…

Although I had vowed never to marry a politician, I ended up with a political engineer, ODM leader Raila Odinga’s wife Ida has said. She was speaking at the funeral of Prof Rok Ajulu in Bondo on Saturday. Ida said Ajulu made her hate lawyers, political scientists, and politicians while at the University of Nairobi. She eulogised him as a sharp and vibrant person who always advocated for democracy in his teenage life, regardless of whether he would brush the government of the day the wrong way. “I was doing a Bachelor of Education degree that takes four years, but when Ajulu and his friend James Orengo led a radical movement at the university, I was forcibly added another year,” Ida said. She said since then, she and her friends…

HAS one faction of the Jubilee brigade in the capital city struck a power-sharing deal? Well, we are informed that the faction, mainly being championed by Senator Mike Sonko (pictured) and nominated MP Johnson Sakaja, is toying with a proposal that the senator retains his seat while the former TNA chairman goes for governor with former Starehe MP Margaret Wanjiru as his running mate. Dagoretti MP Dennis Waweru has been offered speaker of the Nairobi assembly position while Rachel Shebesh has been asked to retain her woman rep position. Shebesh, however, was yesterday seen with the second faction that is now working round-the-clock to ensure former presidential candidate Peter Kenneth clinches the Jubilee ticket. The second faction enjoys the support of the majority of the city’s Jubilee MPs. IS Nairobi…

 FRESH details have emerged in the investigations into the controversial murder of businessman Jacob Juma last May 5. A BROTHER OF SLAIN WHISTLEBLOWER JUMA HAS ASKED POLICE TO INVESTIGATE BILLIONAIRE JIMMY WANJIGI IN CONNECTION WITH THE UNSOLVED MURDER A brother of slain whistleblower Juma has asked police to investigate billionaire Jimmy Wanjigi in connection with the unsolved murder. Wanjigi also recorded a statement with Directorate of Criminal Intelligence detectives in June last year. Francis Shiundu Juma, the victim’s elder brother, has requested the police to, among other things, investigate the business relationship between his brother and Wanjigi. Shiundu also wants the police to investigate the relationship between Wanjigi and Juma’s widow – Miriam Wairimu Wambugu. “The family would want to know why he also helped to raise funds for the…

ONE of the more embarrassing features of Kenyan political life is that no high-profile assassination is ever fully resolved. The state security organs and the AG’s chambers will make a very convincing appearance of being determined to get to the bottom of the crime; investigations will be launched left and right; but a decade later, the grieving family will be no closer to having a clear picture of what really happened to their loved one, or why it happened. Consider the case of JM Kariuki, the legendary critic of our Founding President Jomo Kenyatta, who served as MP for Nyandarua North. When in 1975 JM (as he was known to one and all) was murdered and his brutalized body found in a thicket somewhere in the Ngong Forest, there was…