Infighting, tension at IEBC raise questions on election plans

What you need to know:

  • The battle for control at the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission has not only created divisions between the commissioners and the secretariat but has also further delayed the Sh2.5 billion tender for ballot papers and other election documents.

  • The body starts receiving nomination papers from presidential candidates on Sunday.

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission is locked in intense infighting 71 days to the General Election with the suspension of a senior director on Friday raising questions about preparations for the exercise.

The battle for control at the commission has not only created divisions between the commissioners and the secretariat but has also further delayed the Sh2.5 billion tender for ballot papers and other election documents.

“The truth is that the commission has been turned into a boxing ring. The secretariat has been unhappy with the way the commissioners have been interfering with their work while the commissioners feel that the secretariat is not consulting them enough,” a commission insider, who spoke in confidence, said.

The commission is chaired by Mr Wafula Chebukati while Mr Ezra Chiloba heads the secretariat. This comes as IEBC starts receiving nomination papers from presidential candidates on Sunday.

The situation has not been helped by Friday evening’s leak of a commission plenary memo to send the IT Director James Muhati on a 30-day compulsory leave – even before a letter confirming the decision was drafted. The suspension was confirmed by IEBC yesterday, almost 24 hours after the commission took the action against Mr Muhati.

“The IEBC has sent the director of ICT Mr Muhati on a 30-day compulsory leave following a report by the Audit, Risk and Compliance department that he failed to cooperate in the provision of information requested from the department,” the manager for communication and public affairs, Andrew Limo, said in a statement.

Following Mr Muhati’s suspension, the commission has appointed, in acting capacity, the Data Centre and Infrastructure Manager Chris Msando to head the ICT directorate.

Following the decision to send the senior official home, commission insiders say there are fears that the testing of the electronic system slated for June 10 is now in jeopardy.

The system in question is the Oracle licence for the 2012 Biometric Voter Registration kits which expired in 2014, about a year before Mr Muhati was hired to the commission.

Sources at the commission said that the accusation against Mr Muhati was that he failed to respond to an internal memo dated May 17 from his colleague, the director of audit, risk and compliance Obadiah Keitany.

“We have noted that there is little cooperation from your directorate with regard to provision of requested for purposes of concluding the exercise,” Mr Keitany’s memo to his counterpart reads in part, before quoting the section of the law that allows his department unrestricted access.

Mr Muhati’s suspension carries a lot of ramifications, as he has been spearheading the commission’s preparations for the August 8 elections that will heavily rely on technology in voter identification and result transmission.

BEFORE END

As part of the preparations, the IEBC is required by law to test its technology by June 10, which comes before the end of the suspension.

And even if IEBC was to go ahead with the testing of the technology without him, questions abound on how he will come back and supervise the deployment of a system he did not test.

On the other hand, the tender for ballot papers has turned into a circus with some people within the commission understood to be advocating the Dubai-based firm, Al Ghurair Printing and Publishing Company, which the commission had initially awarded the Sh2.5 billion tender before the High Court nullified the tender following a suit by opposition Cord, which has since changed to Nasa.

Despite the High Court having nullified the award to Al Ghurair, IEBC had put in a notice of appeal which was later withdrawn. IEBC, having withdrawn the notice of appeal, the Dubai firm went to the Court of Appeal seeking to overturn the nullification. The appeal was dismissed in April.

GLARING MISTAKES

Following the dismissal of the appeal, the commission decided to go for a restricted tendering. However, because of what is believed to be infighting, the restricted tendering did not go on as planned – with some glaring mistakes that included selling of tender documents to a company which had not been invited to bid, something not allowed in that category of tendering.

Eventually, the Public Procurement Administrative Review Board, which has also been sucked into the ballot paper tender row, allowed an appeal by Rosecate Promotions & Supplies Limited which had challenged the process.

“An order is hereby issued directing the procuring entity to retender and or procure afresh the election materials, which are subject matter of this request for review using such method as it may consider appropriate taking into account the time left between now and August 8, 2017,” PPARB said in its ruling of May 19.

In the ruling, PPARB, in effect, told IEBC to choose whatever method necessary to meet the legal timelines for the August elections.

The only option now available to IEBC, and for which there is a strong sentiment from within IEBC, is to single source the printing of the ballot papers.

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS

By law, the ballot papers should be in the country by July 22 to give time for sorting and distribution of the same across the country to be completed at least 24 hours before the polls open on August 8.

The current state of affairs at IEBC mirrors the public spat in April between the commission chairman and the chief executive over the proposed transfer of county and constituency returning officers.

After Mr Chebukati publicly reprimanded Mr Chiloba in front of junior staff during training on the Kenya Integrated Elections Management System at a Nairobi hotel, the commission went ahead to implement the same transfers a week later.

According to Mr Chiloba, the proposed staff changes were “with the aim of ensuring efficiency and effectiveness in our operations,” but there appeared to be interference by commissioners leading to the public disagreement.

But almost a month after the transfers, the county staff have also not yet received authority to incur expenditure, a situation that some IEBC sources say has paralysed the commission’s activities at the grassroots, including mobilisation of voters to turn up for voter verification.

Yesterday, Mr Chebukati, Mr Chiloba and IEBC Communication Manager Andrew Limo had not responded to our enquiries by the time of going to press.