IEBC staffed to fail in the 2022 General Election 

Kenya will most likely have a fully constituted Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) by the end of this month, banishing the legal ghosts that have stalked it since four of its seven commissioners controversially quit between 2017 and 2018.

Going by the recent schedule released by the selection panel appointed to fill the vacancies, the ongoing interviews for the 36 shortlisted candidates should be completed by July 22.

The quorum issue has seen the IEBC’s decisions challenged in court and its credibility questioned in the past three years.

Five High Court judges, who in May blocked the proposed BBI constitutional referendum, just fell short of declaring the IEBC unfit for purpose, raising concerns about its preparedness for the 2022 elections as well.

But will filling the vacancies be enough to address the IEBC’s lack of preparedness for the next elections?

Listening to election experts speak at a forum organised by Konrad Adenauer-Stiftung and Elections Observation Group (ELOG) in Nairobi last week, I got the sense our electoral agency is basically staffed to fail.

While much of the public scrutiny has been on the survivors’ trio of IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati and his two fellow commissioners, the challenges on the secretariat have largely stayed under the radar.

Yet the people at the secretariat play a more sensitive role in the management of elections than the seven commissioners. They control the money and budgets, voter registration, the results transmission and vote tallying technology.

Public falling-out

They run the commission’s programmes from their offices at Anniversary Towers and are only occasionally thrust into the limelight by controversy.

In the run-up to the last election, we got to know how crucial the secretariat is to the IEBC’s credibility under some very unfortunate circumstances.

The murder of Chris Msando, the then ICT director, days to the August 2017 election, nearly plunged the country into a crisis.

The public falling-out between chairman Chebukati and CEO Ezra Chiloba gave us a glimpse of what was an effectively dysfunctional commission.

With so little at stake in the past three years, it is difficult to tell how much the ship has been steadied at Anniversary Towers. But as pressure builds towards another election, there are legitimate concerns about the lack of steady hands at the secretariat.

There are just too many senior people, including CEO Marjan Hussein Marjan, serving in acting capacities. A glance at the IEBC website shows that four of its nine directors are acting in those roles.

The dangers of going to an election with such key electoral commission staff uncertain about their personal futures are rather obvious.

It will be asking too much of them to stand up to the intimidation and resist the manipulation that will surely come their way between now and August 2022.

[email protected]. @otienootieno