Lucy Gihuhi
who was declared winner in the Australian Senate.
A stroke of
luck has handed a Kenyan born woman a seat in the Australian Senate after a
special recount ordered by a court declared her the winner of a contested
battle to
represent the state of South Australia.
Lucy
Gichuhi, who moved to Australia in 1999 and acquired citizenship in 2001, had
lost to Senator Bob Day during the primaries in July last year but the court in
February ruled that he was ineligible to be elected.
This set the
stage for a recount which took place yesterday.
And at her
home in Nyeri, the family is planning a major feast today to mark her victory.
“I want to
slaughter that goat for my family so that we can celebrate this achievement,”
said Justus Weru, her father who had keenly been following the news from their
home in Hiriga village in Karatina.
Celebrity
status
Since the
news broke, the family has acquired some celebrity status as villagers throng
their home to get an update of what is going on in Australia.
Vying on a
Family First Party ticket, the trained accountant from the University of
Nairobi and law graduate from the University of South Australia, was the only
other candidate besides Mr Day seeking to represent South Australia.
She,
however, lost getting just 152 votes.
However,
Australian electoral laws say in case a winner is declared to be
unconstitutionally elected, the seat remains in the same party and their votes
go to the person who lost to them during the primaries if a recount is ordered
and there is no other candidate.
And although
the High Court still needs to officially approve the result, Australian media
reported that there is nothing that stands in the way of the woman, born on the
foothills of Mt Kenya, to becoming the first person of Kenyan descent elected
to Federal Parliament.
“Despite
polling just 152 primary votes at the last election, the Kenyan-born lawyer,
who was Family First’s number two Senate candidate, received enough flow
through from votes that went to Bob Day to score the $200,000-a-year position,”
the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), reported.
“The
Australian Electoral Officer for SA has provided the result to the High Court
of Australia for its consideration,” said The Advertiser.
As a country
and the smallest continent on earth, Australia has six states each represented
by 12 senators using a matrix dependent on the number of votes that parties get
during an election with strongest getting the highest.
The states
are New South Wales, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and
Queensland. Covering 983,482 square kilometres, South Australia is the fourth
largest with a population of about two million people.
If Gichuhi
is confirmed, she will become the third Kenyan to win a high profile elective
seat outside the country and the second person of African descent to sit in the
continent’s parliament. Australia’s Health Minister Susan Ley was born in
Nigeria.
An ecstatic
Mrs Gichuhi had told the media she was nervous as she waited for the results of
the special ballot recount.
“Absolutely,
yes, I would love to take over as the Family First senator,” she said.
“What I
would like to bring is just empowering new and emerging communities and just
making them feel and participate as Australians, other than just being in the
sideline,” she said.
In 2014,
Elizabeth Kangethe, another Kenyan was elected Mayor of Barking and Dagenham in
the UK. In 1997 Barack Obama won the Illinois Senate seat before advancing to
the US Senate in 2004 and finally as the President of the world’s super power
in 2008.
Like Obama,
Gichuhi was up to last week fighting controversies about her citizenship with
various political forces questioning whether she holds dual citizenship. The
Australian constitution bars anyone with dual citizenship from sitting in
Parliament.
“Anyone
under any acknowledgment of allegiance, obedience, or adherence to a foreign
power” can be disqualified unless they have taken ‘all reasonable steps’ to
renounce their other citizenship,” it says in section 44.
So bad was
the controversy that Kenya’s High Commissioner to Australia Isaiya Kabiria was
forced last week to clarify that she lost her Kenyan citizenship when she
became an Australian citizen.
“Before we
promulgated our new constitution in 2010, anyone who applied for citizenship in
another country automatically lost their Kenyan citizenship,” he told ABC.
“As far as
we’re concerned in our records, Lucy Gichuhi has never applied for citizenship,
therefore, she does not possess any Kenyan citizenship,” he said.
Standard
Digital
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