Around the year 67 BC the wife of Roman
Julius Caesar, Pompeia, hosted the Bona
Dea festival, this was a religious festival that
celebrated fertility and virginity; no men were allowed. However a young
patrician named Publius Clodius Pulcher managed to gain admittance by
disguising himself as a woman, apparently for the purpose of seducing Pompeia,
the wife of Caesar. During the festival, Pubilius Clodius was found disguised
as a woman, and he was persecuted for sacrilege. Caesar then divorced Pompeia
after this incident. Julius Caesar divorced his wife (Pompeia) because of rumours
of opprobrious behaviour. When asked why he divorced her, Caesar said he knew
nothing about his wife’s rumoured adultery, but asserted that he divorced her
because his wife “ought not even be under suspicion”.
These Caesar’s wife principle of
leaders being beyond suspicion is the principle that the drafters of the
constitution had in mind when they included Chapter Six on Leadership and
integrity in our constitution. They envisioned leaders who will not pinch
people noses, they envision leaders who will not slap each other in public, they
envisioned leaders who will not be involved in violent & dishonourable acts,
they envisioned leader who will not be involved in unruly behaviour in
parliament, they envisioned leaders who will not exchange blows and hurled
insults at each other and they envision leaders who will not scare the public with
armed bodyguards brandishing weapons aimlessly.
When leaders don’t uphold the
requirements and standard of Chapter six questions must be asked, answers must
be given and action must be taken. And it’s a high time the judgment in the
case of Kenya Human Rights Commission & 5 others versus Uhuru Kenyatta
& 4 others is read and re-read where the bench ruled that “the society expects
certain values to be upheld, the integrity provisions of the Constitution
demand that those [aspiring] to State office be like Caesar’s wife: they must
be beyond reproach.”
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