By June 2011, four years after he was elected Gatundu North MP, the Hansard indicated that Clement Kung'u Waibara was yet to speak or contribute to any debate in Parliament.
However, it is not because Waibara was an introvert of sort or even reclusive, but because he is said to be a semi-illiterate, who could not even read the grades on his KCPE result slip.During the hearing of a case that had been filed by a voter challenging the MP's proficiency in both Swahili and English, Waibara is reported to have caused a spectacle in court when he was given a copy of his KCPE results by the petitioner and asked to read them aloud.Clueless, he blatantly refused, prompting the judge to threaten to jail him for contempt of court, Daily Nation reported in 2011."The MP lifted the results slip and started reading with eyes squinted. In one of the subjects, the MP read out that he had scored a “D-star” instead of a “D-plus” causing laughter in court," the Nation reported.And during the last hearing, the publication adds, Waibara was handed a copy of Taifa Leo to read aloud in court where he again caused hearty laughter when he pronounced the number '56' in English instead of saying 'hamsini na sita' in Kiswahili.The ridicule that Waibara caused himself and his constituents during his 5-year term, is also said to have infuriated his father Joseph Waibara. The father is a retired high school principal who blamed his son for his own predicaments.“I wanted to educate him up to university, but he let me down and dropped out of school and abandoned the Sh5,000 in fees I had paid for him at Makuyu secondary school,” Waibara told the Nation in 2011.“I was salaried. I was a headmaster, and I could not fail to pay fees for my son as he claims," he added.The smartly dressed former MP is said to have run away from home to avoid school, preferring to work as a freelance photographer in Gatundu town.Waibara vied unsuccessfully for the same seat in the 2013 and 2017 general elections. However, he successfully challenged the election of current MP Wanjiku Kibe at the Kiambu High Court leading to nullification.Kibe, nevertheless, challenged the ruling at the Court of Appeal and the court is yet to rule on the matter.
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