The Wafula Chebukati-led IEBC has many tasks awaiting them, running from by-elections, 2019 National Census and 2022 general elections. However, many Kenyans still have no faith in the commission following its past events, or do you? Well, the commission has made a raft of proposals to seal endemic loopholes in an elaborate strategy to secure the 2022 presidential polls.
Plagued by systemic failures in election management over the years, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission has come up with an action plan that is seen as key to redeeming its ragged image.
In the commission’s 2017 post-election evaluation report obtained exclusively by the Star, the IEBC proposes that to ensure proper poll preparations, commissioners must be in office at least two years to elections.
The electoral agency says where it is not possible to appoint commissioners two years to elections, their recruitment should be staggered to ensure their terms do not end at the same time.
“This would ensure continuity and institutional memory,” reads the IEBC report.
In 2017, commissioners were appointed seven months to the General Election and in 2013 they were appointed 15 months prior.
Following the bungled August 8 presidential election, the IEBC commissioners claimed they came into office to close to the polls and that former CEO Ezra Chiloba was running the show.
The blame game resulted in a bitter fallout between the commission and the secretariat headed by Chiloba.
The Supreme Court ruling that nullified the reelection of President Uhuru Kenyatta over irregularities and illegalities in the conduct of the polls blamed the secretariat for bungling the elections.
Now the commission says the late appointment of commissioners goes against international best practice as well as recommendations by the Johann Kriegler-led Independent Review Commission.
The Kriegler commission came up with sweeping electoral management proposals following the disputed 2007 general election that sparked widespread violence killing over 1,300 people and displacing thousands others.