Credibility of 2012 poll outcome depends on appointees to IEBC

One can expect that appointment to the new Independent and Electoral and Boundaries Commission will provide theatre for the usual tussles between the PNU and ODM sides of the coalition government.

With the 2012 General Election already being counted-down, the issue of who will manage the polls will come to the fore, with the 2007 fiasco in mind.

Also most crucial for the new team will be the constituencies boundaries review that aborted under the dissolved Interim Independent Boundaries Commission.

Many analysts have in the past traced the 2007 General Elections crisis to President Kibaki’s decision to make unilateral appointments to the then Electoral Commission of Kenya, putting in place commissioners presumed to be in thrall to his re-election campaign.

The story might go back to the limited reforms hammered out ten years earlier under the Inter-Parties Parliamentary Group package.

In the run-up to the 1997 elections, then President Daniel arap Moi was under sustained pressure as street protests driven by civil society and religious groups demanding a new constitution escalated.

He managed to defuse the tension by reaching out to the Parliamentary opposition then headed by Democratic Party chairman Mwai Kibaki.

The result was a package of minimal constitutional reforms; including a greatly expanded Electoral Commission that included members nominated directly by the Parliamentary opposition parties.

The idea was that with all parties represented in the body managing the polls, there would be less opportunity to steal the elections as the members would keep watch on each other.

However, the formula reached on opposition presence in the Electoral Commission was reached through a gentleman’s agreement rather than by any specific legislation.

President Moi was re-elected in 1997 under the expanded Electoral Commission, and it was more or less the same team that oversaw the 2002 elections that ended Kanu’s 40-year rule and ushered President Kibaki into office.

As the 2007 elections approached and President Kibaki sought his own second and final term, vacancies were opening up in the Electoral Commission.

Ignoring demands that he stick to the IPPG formula, President Kibaki decided to make unilateral appointments, leading to angry protests that he was packing the electoral body with members beholden to his campaign.

His one concession was to retain Mr Samuel Kivuitu, who at that time was seen as fairly neutral. But there was still a lot of bad blood as the country went into elections under a team seen to be in beholden to the Kibaki election machinery.

The rest, as they say, as history. The post-mortem out of the 2007 election fiasco indicated that the Kivuitu Commission was responsible for messing up the polls.

The Commission of Inquiry under South African Judge Johannes Kriegler recommended dissolution of the Electoral Commission, and hence the legislation under the post-election pact brokered by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan that sent the Kivuitu team packing.

The disgraced Commission was succeeded by the Interim Independent Electoral Commission chaired by youthful lawyer Issack Ahmed Hassan; and the Interim Independent Boundaries Commission by veteran former MP Andrew Ligale.

The performance of the interim bodies provided a stark illustration of the difference between a fresh and youthful face brimming with new ideas; and a grizzled veteran stuck in the past and laden with political baggage.

It is the general consensus that the Hassan team restored faith in the electoral system, deploying new technology to manage a series of parliamentary and civic by-elections and the 2010 constitutional referendum with an efficiency, speed and transparency previously unseen in Kenya.

The Ligale team, by contrast, was an unmitigated disaster. From the onset, there were suspicions about the chairman’s links to ODM.

Then when it came to the constituency boundaries review, there were was a justifiable uproar over appearances of gerrymandering.

By the team the boundaries review was completed, the Ligale team had actually not finished its work.

It provided Parliament only with a list of constituencies to be divided or created, but had undertaken no detailed mapping of the new boundaries.

There were also complaints that some of the proposed new constituencies were drawn up to favour individuals or political groupings.

Parliament managed to buy time on an explosive issue by adopting the report, but putting on hold implementation that will now be the headache of the new Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission.