MPs launch bid to reform polls body

A group of MPs from Jubilee and Cord coalitions on Monday embarked on a Parliamentary initiative to resolve the stand-off over the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission.

The 50 MPs who held a joint meeting at a Nairobi hotel said that the bipartisan Parliamentary Caucus involving both the National Assembly and the Senate was necessary in guiding the electoral reforms.

They said they will seek to engage the President, political parties, coalitions’ leaders and the leadership of Parliament at the highest level in order to clarify issues that need to be resolved.

Led by Mukurweini MP Kabando wa Kabando and Ugenya’s David Ochieng’, the MPs said there was need to come up with comprehensive proposals on legal and institutional reforms aimed at preparing the country for peaceful, transparent and credible elections next year.

“We decry the high levels of ethnic polarisation arising out of the IEBC matter and urge all the parties involved to maintain a modicum of modernisation in their public utterances and political mobilisation,” Mr Kabando said.

He further said the recommended caucus would work towards providing a broad-based mechanism for receiving and processing presentations from all parties with regards to the electoral body issue.

“The caucus will allow the non-parliamentary parties to engage in these matters as well as build on what is currently being discussed at the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee,” he said.

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Mr Ochieng urged all the players to act with decorum, restraint, respect and with regard to the law and established institutions.

"We have met on the premise of a painful truth that eight years is too soon for us to have forgotten what the country went through after the 2007/8 elections," he said.

While in Kericho, Senate Majority Leader Kindiki Kithure asked Cord leadership to nominate members of its team to take part in dialogue over the IEBC.

Prof Kindiki hit out at the Opposition leaders for ignoring calls by Parliament to present a petition seeking the removal of the IEBC commissioners, and instead, organising demonstrations that have led to the death of three innocent Kenyans.

Speaking at a church fundraiser on Sunday, he told leaders Raila Odinga, Kalonzo Musyoka and Moses Wetang'ula to appoint representatives for the talks.

“Because they have said we have refused to talk, I want to challenge my friends in the Opposition to go and sit down and give us a list of people who they would like to participate in the negotiations, and choose the venue where you would like us to hold the dialogue,” he said at the Roret AIC, where he was accompanied by Bureti MP Leonard Sang.