Mr John Kipsang Koech, the longest-serving Member of Parliament (MP) of Chepalungu Constituency and a former Cabinet Minister, died on Tuesday in Nairobi. He was 79.
His family announced that he had died at Nairobi Hospital after a short illness but did not give any further details.
Koech was born in 1946 in Segemik, a small village in Olbutyo, which is part of Chepalungu Constituency in the old Bomet District. He served as the MP for Chepalungu for over two decades, starting in 1979.
Before his election to Parliament, he worked as a high school teacher between 1973 and 1975, after graduating in 1972 with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Makerere University, Uganda. He was later employed as a government education officer in 1976, a position he held until joining politics to vie for the MP seat.
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Koech served as Chepalungu MP from 1979 until 1997, when he was unseated by a youthful Isaac Kiprono Ruto, who would later become Bomet County’s first governor.
In the 2002 general elections, he won back his seat but was again defeated by the same Isaac Ruto in 2007. This time, he contemplated retiring from politics permanently.
His fate was sealed ten years later, in 2017, when he unsuccessfully sought the Bomet gubernatorial seat but lost to the late Dr Joyce Laboso.
Even so, Koech had a great career in politics. He held important jobs in the government while he was an MP. From 1988 to 1989, he was the Minister of Public Works under President Daniel Moi. Later, from 2006 to 2007, he served as the Minister for East African Regional Cooperation under President Mwai Kibaki.
When he was not an MP after losing in 1997, he worked as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Permanent Representative from 1998 to 2000.
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