Hassan to face House team over audit report

The chairman of the electoral commission Issack Hassan could be preparing for his toughest assignment when he appears before the National Assembly’s Justice and Legal Affairs Committee (JLAC) on Tuesday.

This comes as members of the committee are said to have differed over whether to have the Public Service Commission (PSC) nominate a member to the proposed Selection Panel that will recruit new commissioners of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC).

The proposal to have PSC is backed by Jubilee but Cord members argue that that would give their opponents undue advantage.

“The major point of divergence is the Jubilee proposal to bring in the Public Service Commission into the matter. PSC is just an extension of the Executive and giving them a seat in the Selection Panel would mean that the executive would have more representation than the opposition,” Homa Bay Town MP Peter Kaluma (Cord) said.

According to Mr Kaluma, the thinking among Cord members is that the majority and minority sides in the National Assembly should nominate two persons each to the Selection Panel.

The other members would then have to come from other stakeholders other than executive arms, like professional and religious bodies.

“We still don’t have a committee position because until now we have been discussing individual proposals. Several members from both sides of the political divide, including the chairman Samuel Chepkong’a, have come up with draft proposals, all of which we have to harmonise,” said Mr Kaluma.

But Jubilee members of the JLAC denied claims of division over the place of PSC.

“We are still caucusing but the proposal is to have PSC provide secretarial services to the Selection Panel. The committee has not been divided by politics of IEBC,” Ol Jororok MP Muriithi Waiganjo said.

'SNUBBED'
According to Mr Waiganjo, the committee is trying to do everything by consensus.  

Apart from PSC’s place in the Selection Panel, members of the committee have reached consensus on reducing the number of commissioners from the current nine to five who will work on part-time basis.

In addition, committee members said they have also considered the areas for reforms and there is an agreement that there is nothing requiring constitutional amendment.

Meanwhile, the committee members are spoiling for a fight with Mr Hassan and the commissioners for snubbing them last Thursday.

MPs had invited the officers to shed light on the audit report by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that implicated them.

Instead, only the Vice-Chairperson Lilian Mahiri-Zaja, CEO Ezra Chiloba and his deputy Betty Nyabuto, and a handful of junior secretariat staff turned up.

Already under fire from the opposition, religious, civil society and the Law Society of Kenya, JLAC now feels that it was “contemptuous” of IEBC commissioners to snub them.

“Their absence was contemptuous of the committee. That was the general feeling among members,” said Mr Kaluma.

The PAC report had implicated Mr Hassan, Dr Nzibo, Mr Alawi and Mr Letangule along with their Commissioners Albert Bwire, Kule Godana, Abdullahi Sharawe and Muthoni Wangai over the bungled procurement of electronic devices in 2013.