Jean-Marie Seroney (25 July 1927 – 6 December 1982) was a Kenyan human rights advocate, legislator, and an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience.

As a legislator, he worked hard to introduce bills that would remove or at least check the excessive powers vested in the president as a result of the numerous amendments to the Constitution.

Seroney decried what he described as the wanton abuse of power by the executive and condemned corruption, the unfair distribution of national wealth, theft of land from the poor by the ruling elite, and the failure to resettle the landless.

He made powerful enemies, and his detention in harsh prison conditions for three and a half years set in motion the events that eventually led to his death.

It was during one of his visits to Kabartonjo in Tugen country that Reuben Seroney met Daniel Toroitich arap Moi, later to become President of Kenya.

Reuben Seroney disagreed with them over Nandi cultural practices that the AIM church continued to strongly oppose as well as the failure of the organization to grant him pastoral authority.

He was survived by his wife Rebecca and their twelve children, Jean-Marie, Grace, David, Walter, Graham, Richard, Jean, Agnes, Christine, Tom, Eunice, and Levi.

The young Eric Seroney was baptized an Anglican in 1944 but also fell out with his own father in the matter of religion while attending Makerere College in 1946 where he became a Roman Catholic.

While in India, Jean-Marie Seroney had kept the political pressure on the colonial government by various methods, even publishing an article in the Indian Review of January 1950 entitled 'Threat of South African Fascism to East Africa.

[8] Shortly before he went to Exeter, he attended and addressed the World Assembly for Moral Re-Armament in Caux, Switzerland in August 1952 and called for a new way of dealing with the issue of colonialism.

[13] After differences with university authorities at Exeter over what he considered a repetition of his degree from India, he opted to go straight for the Bar instead of going through with the intermediate LLB.

He made history as only the third Kenyan to become a barrister after Chiedo More Gem Argwings-Kodhek and Charles Njonjo, and the first to also hold a law degree.

Seroney continued with covert political activities at the height of Kenya's emergency period in the fifties engaging with many of the early politicians such as Tom Mboya, Oginga Odinga, Dr. Julius Kiano and many others.

In 1963 he was elected Member of Parliament for Nandi North Constituency on a Kenya African Democratic Union ticket and also took his seat in the regional assembly that met in Nakuru.

Some strong political forces in the Rift Valley started to gang up against Seroney ahead of the 1974 general election held on 14 October.

He won the seat despite vigorous opposition by no less than President Jomo Kenyatta who uncharacteristically adjourned Parliament for three months in a bid to prevent Seroney from being elected Deputy Speaker.

Things came to a head after the murder of Nyandarua North Member of Parliament and vocal Government critic Josiah Mwangi Kariuki in March 1975.

On 9 October 1975, Jean-Marie Seroney got in trouble again when as Deputy Speaker of Parliament after he refused to ask Martin Shikuku MP for Butere to substantiate his remark that "Kanu was dead".

[22] Earlier that day he had sparked heated and bitter debate when he sought the Speaker's ruling on his security after getting wind that policemen were waiting to pick him and Shikuku up.

[25] Just a week later, another delegation led by Ezekiel Barng'etuny went to Kabarak this time taking a young middle management employee of the Kenya Breweries named Henry Kiprono Kosgey.

The indefatigable efforts of Ezekiel Barngetuny (who also went on to introduce Samuel Ngeny to beat Simeon Kiptum Choge and Stanley Metto to remove Robert Tanui in Mosop through his famous slogan 'Kibunguok Somok' or 'Three Keys') The election symbol for Kosgey, Ngeny, and Metto was the Key which was partially to spite Seroney for having 'locked' away or closed development in Nandi.

He narrated a story told to him by H. K. Burrows the proprietor of Ogirgir Tea estate who found a mob of rowdy youth that had captured Seroney, roughed him up, spat on him all over, soiled him and mocked him in public as he was on the campaign trail[when?].

He faced imminent foreclosure and desperately tried to seek the help of the Government to at least waive off his interest for the time he was in detention now that he had not been tried and found guilty of any offense.

In 1980, in a tokenistic gesture, Moi appointed Seroney as the Chairman of the Industrial Development Bank of Kenya (IDB) which was not a paid position and was merely a ceremonial head.

Constant financial worries and deeper fears of his own failings drove him to a state of depression and he withdrew from the public only limiting his brief appearance in the Press to official matters.

Through his close friendship with Tom Mboya, he helped organize the famous 'Air Lifts' that sent many Kenyans to universities in the United States starting from the late fifties.

He called for the Government to clear Odinga and members of his Party the Kenya People's Union before the elections and to end the practice of detention without trial.

He vigorously opposed attempts to make Kenya a single-party state strongly rooting for pluralism and political tolerance as well as national cohesion with the presence of active parliamentary opposition to check government.

Seroney vigorously fought against Corruption in the Kenyatta and Moi Administrations and helped Martin Shikuku come up with a Bill to fight the vice in Kenya.

A biographical book entitled Just for Today: The Life and Times of Jean-Marie Seroney by Godfrey K. Sang was launched at Jesus College, Oxford on 13 November 2015 by former Prime Minister Hon.