Electoral reforms key to fair polls: Raila

Cord leader Raila Odinga has accused the Jubilee Coalition of refusing to implement electoral reforms being pushed by the Opposition as part of a grand scheme to rig the next General Election.

The former Prime Minister, who is currently in Lesotho as the head of a 40-member team of African Union observers to monitor yesterday’s General Election, said the Jubilee Coalition is hell-bent on keeping power.

“In order for losers of any election to accept the outcome of an electoral process, it largely depends on the credibility of the process which will also depend on who is in power,” he said during an interview with the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) ahead of the elections.

“If we have an incumbent who is hell-bent on using the elections to perpetuate himself in power, then they will resist all kinds of reforms, I know this speaking from Kenya,” he said.

He added that it was now two years into the government and Jubilee had rejected reforms to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission.
“This is basically because they want to use the elections as a civilian coup,” he said.

Cord has consistently demanded that the current electoral commissioners be sent home, claiming they bungled the March 2013 presidential elections in which Jubilee’s Uhuru Kenyatta was declared the winner.

COMPLETE OVERHAUL

The coalition has been pushing for the complete overhaul of IEBC citing systematic and deep rooted problems in the commission that could affect the outcome of the 2017 General Election.

The coalition is currently working on the Okoa Kenya Bill which proposes, among other things, that the electoral body shall have seven commissioners who will be chosen by political parties in order of their numerical strength in Parliament.

If that were to pass, ODM, TNA, URP, Wiper, UDF, Ford Kenya and New Ford Kenya would each nominate a person to serve in the commission.

At the moment, the IEBC has nine full-time commissioners and a fully-fledged secretariat.

During the interview that was broadcast live in South Africa, Mr Odinga accused sitting African Heads of State of being the greatest stumbling block to free and fair elections on the continent.

“In Africa they say elections are stolen not lost and we are yet to reach a stage where the processes are free and fair so that winners receive a magnanimous victory and losers will accept that they lost fairly,” he said.