Wafula Chebukati’s litmus test and our buck passing

By now, Wafula Chebukati must be pondering why he walked into this electoral circus. Although it comes with a monthly salary of Sh924,000, his is a nerve-wracking appointment.

As the chairman of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), the package is good: security, a chauffeur, diplomatic passport and first class travel.

The pay is equivalent to that of a governor, Cabinet Secretary, Attorney General and Chief of Defence Forces, giving him a pivotal position among the State Officers.

But is this Kenya’s most thankless job?

CLEANEST ELECTION

Mr Chebukati had thought that he had conducted Kenya’s cleanest election – and he could be right to an extent and depending on whom you ask.

That was until the Supreme Court poked holes into the conduct and dismissed the highfalutin view of a taintless election.

But election management, as we have come to learn, is a highly toxic political affair – and we are not alone.

Several international observers – and even the liberal New York Times – had praised the poll before they all made a political somersault after the Supreme Court’s ruling that is earning rebuke and praise in equal portions.

FALLOUT

This week, Mr Chebukati (he changed the spelling of his name in 1997 from Chebkati) was fighting to control the IEBC amidst fears that there was a serious fallout between the commissioners ahead of October 17 presidential elections.

He had also sent a terse memo to the CEO, Ezra Chiloba, asking him to explain some internal failures which have become fodder for the opposition. 

Then the drama began within IEBC: backstabbing, betrayal, and rise of factions. Finally, as the Nation put it, Chiloba was thrown under the bus in what was akin to those betrayals in Greek mythology.

For solace, Chebukati should perhaps buy Jefrey Toobin’s two books: Too Close to Call and The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court to have a glimpse of the kind of controversies that political contests spark even in established democracies.

VOLUSIA ERROR

Toobin’s inside story of the US election in the contest between Al Gore and George Bush exposed how things could go wrong – even with the best of technology. Al Gore supporters had gone to bed thinking that he had won – Fox News had said as much – only to wake up to a Bush victory.

For starters, during the final bend of the 2000 US presidential race, focus had turned to the State of Florida and whoever won the 25 electoral votes would have become the president. 

As celebrated Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank would later write; what became known as ‘Volusia Error” was not as a result of fraud or corruption, “but lax state oversight, inadequate funding, technological glitches, poor training – and general ineptitude”.

The Volusia error had been detected on the night of November 7, 2000 when everyone was waiting for the final results of the Volusia County, which was to determine who wins between Al Gore and Bush.

While Al Gore was leading George W Bush with 83,000 votes to 62,000, something happened to the tally an hour later and the county’s website indicated that Al Gore’s vote had dropped by 16,000 votes and a joker candidate had received 10,000 votes from an area with only 600 registered voters.

VOTING MACHINE

This is what went wrong: The Americans were using a voting machine that seemed to add votes to George W Bush and subtract those of Al Gore.

As it was realised later, the voting machine in an area with only 412 registered voters had somehow given Bush 2,813 votes and in addition had given Gore a negative vote count of -16,022 votes.

Republicans and Democrats wrangled and could not agree on how to count the votes. They would start the recount and then stop.

To cut the long story short, and after Al Gore went to court seeking to overturn Bush’s victory, the US Supreme Court stopped an order from Florida’s Supreme Court that had ordered a recount allowing George W. Bush to become the 43rd President of the United States, despite losing the popular vote to Al Gore.

VOTE STASHING

Rigging and vote stashing can happen and does happen. Of course no nation will ever smash Liberia’s Guinness Book of Records 1,660 per cent turn-out in the 1927 election when Charles King of the True Whig Party defeated Thomas Faulkner by garnering 243,000 votes against Faulkner’s 9,000.

That was in an election that had only 15,000 registered voters! Wherever the votes came from, nobody knows.

Mr Chebukati, as he faces his litmus test, may perhaps have to look back to the days of Frederick Peter Byrne Derrick, the former Kiambu District Commissioner, who was appointed by Governor Patrick Renison to supervise the elections of 1961 which pitted Kanu against KADU at a time when calls for the release of Kenyatta were in top gear.

While Kanu won the polls by getting 19 seats against KADU’s 11, it refused to form the government unless Jomo Kenyatta was released from prison.

ETHNIC MOBILISATION

Renison, who thought Kenyatta was a “leader unto darkness and death”, was hoping that a coalition government would emerge or what he called a “government of moderates, rather than Kanu tough boys.”

But after Kanu refused to form government, a coalition of losers, KADU led by Ronald Ngala and the New Kenya Group of Michael Blundell were sweet-talked to save the country from a Constitutional circus. But that election failed to resolve the political issues.

It was this election which planted the seeds of ethnic mobilisation which is still clothed as multi-party politics.

Derrick, who died during a heart operation at Britain’s Harefield Hospital in 1970, was perhaps not to blame.

But he did not stay for long after this controversy and in April 1961, was taken to the office of the Chief Secretary, Anthony Swann, as a deputy secretary.

COMMISSION

A year later, Renison was also replaced by a moderate governor Malcom McDonald on January 9, 1962.

The next election was as messy. Before he left, governor Renison had in August 1962 appointed R.A. Wilkinson as the Supervisor of Elections.

But Wilkinson was to conduct polls in an already poisoned environment. During the Lancaster Constitutional Conference of 1962, it was agreed that a Commission will be established to ascertain public opinion in the Northern Frontier Districts inhabited by the Somali and regarding the future of this area.

The Somali were pushing to be integrated into a greater Somalia which included the then British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland.

The Commission was indeed formed and it received 40,000 people at their barazas, interviewed 134 delegations and received 106 written submissions. They all wanted to secede.

SOMALI BOYCOTT

But both Tom Mboya and Jomo Kenyatta, who had by then been released, would not accept it and Britain had to give in and throw away results of its own referendum.

Wilkinson was to conduct the May 1963 elections amidst the threatened boycott by the Somali after the UK government announced that the NFD would be the seventh region of Kenya.

We now know that the UK did not care about the feelings of the Somali and the ensuing boycott.

Even after Wilkinson managed to register a paltry 1,622 people to vote in the expansive region – and it was left out finally – the boycott would turn into a full blown war of secession thanks to failure of bureaucrats in London and Nairobi.

ELECTION MANAGEMENT

Three years ago, I had a meeting with Charles Njonjo in his Westland’s office and the debate veered into the management of elections.

“I don’t understand why we can’t have clean elections,” said the man whose office from 1960s to 1982 was in charge of the office of the supervisor of elections.

During his days, returning officers were district commissioners and were for instance used to rig the “little general elections” of 1966 when Oginga Odinga decamped from Kanu into KPU.

I remember asking him about that and he feigned memory loss – he couldn’t recall any irregularities. And rather than press an old man who had courteously, and out of the blues, invited me to have a chat on politics we shifted to another topic.

LITTLE GENERAL ELECTION

Looking back, passing the buck is a full-time job within the government.

Perhaps the only person who did not taste the wrath of voters was Donald Owuor who had a short stint as Supervisor in 1965 before Charles Njonjo brought Darius Mbela into the scene in January 1966 and exhibited the heavy-handedness of his role.

The 1966 little general election was marked by extensive cheating and the government managed to paddock Jaramogi’s Kenya People’s Union into Nyanza.

Njonjo would later challenge KPU members to “report to the police” of any irregularities.

MANIPULATION

In March 1967, Njonjo appointed Norman John Montgomery to replace Mbela and he has the record of the longest serving from 1967 to 1980 when he was replaced by Zachary Nyarango.

But even Montgomery had a dark side and was always prone to manipulation.

During the 1974 elections, he kept quiet as government critic JM Kariuki was barred from campaigning and he was forced to print some witty posters distributed by his wife:

“If this man has done nothing for you don’t elect him,” read the posters.

Mr Kariuki won the Nyandarua North parliamentary seat by 16,000 votes against his rivals 3,000. The following year, 1975, he was assassinated.

SWAPPED VOTES

In 1979, another critic veteran politician Masinde Muliro was forced to file a case in the High Court after Montgomery ordered a recount of the Kitale East votes then reversed the decision without any explanation.

What we now know is that the Nyayo regime wanted Fidelis Gumo for the seat and that Muliro’s votes were swapped to those of his opponent!

Again, the 1979 election tainted Montgomery’s reputation after the Office of the President ensured that all Moi’s opponents were ousted especially among the Kalenjins.

Among the beneficiaries were Nicholas Biwott whose opponent Stanley Kurgat was forced to step down in exchange for an appointment as a parastatal head.

At times, Montgomery could only watch. Then he resigned to save face and was replaced by Mr Nyarango, a close ally of powerful administrator Simeon Nyachae who had just left Provincial Administration for the Office of the President.

WORST ELECTION

It was Mr Nyarango who supervised the Njonjo-scare 1983 snap General Election that saw the fall of all those associated with the former Attorney General.

Interestingly, the plot to oust Njonjo was hatched during a breakfast meeting in Kisii ahead of a political rally.

By our standards, the 1983 election rigging still remains the worst although it hardly measures to the 1988 queue voting elections supervised by J.P. Mwangovya who had been appointed in 1987.

But neither Mwangovya nor Nyarango faced the wrath of the system which they worked for.

While the clamour for pluralism came with it the search for an independent body to conduct elections, the development of a system that is wholly shielded from politicos from both the opposition and the government is a battlefield.

POLITICAL BAD MANNERS

From the days of retired Chief Justice Zaccheaus Chesoni – who was appointed by President Moi together with his commissioners – to Wafula Chebukati, the political bad-manners remain the same.

At one point, Chesoni would swear President Moi at dawn as Kenneth Matiba protested.

In 1997, following the Inter-Parliamentary Parties Group Bill (IPPG), the number of commissioners were increased to 22 to give political parties a chance to nominate their representatives.

READ: OTIENO: Why the IEBC server is the new Nithi in rigging claims

READ: EDITORIAL: Polls team must get it right in repeat election

Yet again, President Moi won and the body was accused of being swayed by Kanu.

SWORD OF DAMOCLES

The same would happen to Mwai Kibaki who was declared winner by Samuel Kivuitu amidst protests by the opposition leader Raila Odinga in 2007.

This sparked the post-election violence and the fall of Kivuitu.

While the IEBC was supposed to cure the ills of past years, the first chairman Issak Hassan got into troubles with politicians who pulled him out.

Wafula Chebukati is now facing the same Sword of Damocles that faced his predecessors.

But in between, he has turned to chief of buck passing in order to survive.

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