William Kamket: The first-time MP behind Bill on presidency
Tiaty MP William Kamket. His proposal to amend the Constitution for the country to adopt a parliamentary system hardly comes as a surprise for a man who has never made it a secret that he hopes to be president of Kenya. PHOTO | AYUB MUIYURO | NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
Mr Kamket attended Tenges High School until 1992.
He got his first job at Nation Media Group after he graduated from the Kenya Institute of Mass Communication in 1996.
It was during the 2017 election that he finally defeated Mr Asman Kamama for the MP’s seat.
Like many other children born in the dry, barren land of the conflict-prone Baringo County, Mr William Kamket does not know his exact date of birth.
His parents, however, use an incident when there was an eclipse of the sun to place his date of birth at 1973.
“My ID card indicates I was born in 1973, but the date was arrived at following the eclipse. Otherwise, I was born between 1971 and 1973,” said Mr Kamket in an interview in 2016.
His family lived a poor nomadic life complicated by insecurity resulting from banditry in the area.
Mr Kamket attended Tenges High School until 1992.
He got his first job at Nation Media Group after he graduated from the Kenya Institute of Mass Communication in 1996 and would later join Parliament as a Hansard reporter in 1997, but resigned to pursue a degree in mass communication at Makerere University in Uganda.
He returned and briefly worked in Parliament, but quit to contest the Baringo East parliamentary seat in 2007. He failed, but got a soft landing in the East African Legislative Assembly as a clerk where he served until 2012. Mr Kamket tried his luck again in the parliamentary race with the constituency then renamed to Tiaty, but lost.
He, however, convinced MCAs to elect him as Baringo Speaker.
Even then his tenure as Speaker was not minus challenges.
He had to fight to keep his job as MCAs sought to impeach him over accountability issues and claims he was a warlord.
It was during the 2017 election that he finally defeated Mr Asman Kamama for the MP’s seat.
His proposal to amend the Constitution for the country to adopt a parliamentary system hardly comes as a surprise for a man who has never made it a secret that he hopes to be president of Kenya.
“It will take a president from the nomadic communities, may be myself, to deal with the problem of cattle rustling effectively. Those we have been in power from other communities don’t know how to deal with it,” he said.
