Key lessons for sports administrators from JSC interviews

 

The serious exercise that the search for Kenya’s next Chief Justice is has also provided instances of comic relief to ordinary folks who have become increasingly burdened by the daily struggle to survive.

The sessions have been a welcome distraction from the panic mode which gripped us on Tuesday after word of an impending hike in the cost of fuel went round, and only subsided on Thursday when, by a miracle, the prices at the pump remained unchanged.

But the interview sessions also reminded me of the folly of running public offices like fiefdoms, something common among Kenyan sports administrators. Woe betides them for one day, they shall be called to account for their actions years after leaving office.

Among the desirable qualities the panel is looking for are high moral character, integrity and impartiality, the applicants’ professional competence, their written and oral communication skills and their demonstration of fairness and good judgment. From Justice Juma Chitembwe, Professor Patricia Kameri-Mbote, Justice Martha Koome, Employment and Labour Court Judge Marete D.K Njagi, the candidates appeared one by one before the panel on live TV.

Some have claimed that a decision as to who will be the next Chief Justice has already been arrived at, and the interviews are a mock exercise meant to hoodwink the public.  The jury is still out on this, but the lessons are not lost in me.

Clearly, the past caught up with some interviewees. On Thursday, the 10-member Judicial Service Commission (JSC) panel put Employment and Labour Court Judge Njagi to task to explain why he jailed some of his staff for making noise in the corridors of the court in Kericho.

Asked why he had been insisting on travelling to his new stations with his wife and even demanding that she be paid an allowance,  Njagi, who has faced nine removal petitions in his nine-year tenure as High Court Judge, said: “...I am entitled to an aide. The issue is that this aide is so special that she has to be my wife. I am not able to live alone. I must have someone who is able to live with me, minus that I will be dead in three days.” The aide in question is his 63-year-old wife who has since retired from the Judiciary.

Outside the panel, individuals also weighed in with petitions that sought JSC to declare some applicants unfit to hold the office of the CJ and Judge of the Supreme Court of Kenya. The petitions had something to do with how some of the applicants have handled cases before them in the past.

Thrown in the deep end, most of the candidates were at pains to offer convincing explanations to ward off the petitions.

That got me thinking. If the rigorous interview context was to be applied to the Kenyan sports scene, very few heads of local sports federations would stand the test.

Your ordinary head of a Kenyan sports federation is a man or woman with an oversized ego who thinks he is God’s gift to Kenyan sportsmen and women.  

If it were in their power to apportion life-sustaining oxygen that is divine providence, critics would suffer instant death.

When they are not listening to their own voices, they are holed up in meetings with a cabal, only to emerge later and issue orders.  

Our know-it-all sports administrators who run roughshod over everyone else then hide behind their big offices and refuse to be accountable should seriously think about life beyond their offices. 

When they are done lining  their pockets with money meant for nurturing the next crop of sports stars,  they will naturally look for something to move to, but how many of them can stand the test of public scrutiny that JSC panelists are subjecting candidates to? 

Karma has a way of catching up with you, especially if you laughed in her face one too many times, celebrated author Jay Krownover warns us.

Like a politician who has overstayed his welcome but does not know it, the past will catch up with our sports administrators when they want to move on to the next target.  BY DAILY NATION