Raila wants 12 IEBC officials accused of bungling poll jailed

Nasa leader Raila Odinga now wants the 12 electoral officials the coalition has named as responsible for the irregularities in the invalidated August 8 presidential election jailed after being ejected from office.

Mr Odinga said the 12 officials, including commissioners Abdi Guliye and Boya Molu as well as chief executive Ezra Chiloba, his two deputies Betty Nyabuto and Marjan Hussein Marjan, must be punished for what Nasa has described as “hurting the sovereign will of the people”.

“The lot that conducted the last elections must watch the next one from their prison cells, not from the IEBC offices,” said Mr Odinga during a press conference at Okoa Kenya secretariat in Lavington Monday afternoon.

He went on: “We do not want elections for the sake of it. We want elections to be conducted by men and women of integrity, not the Chilobas, Guliyes, Kassaits of this world.”

The other officials Mr Odinga has named are directors Immaculate Kasait (elections), Praxedes Tororey (legal), James Muhati (ICT), and Mr Moses Kipkosgey, Mr Chiloba’s legal advisor.

BLACK LIST

Also in the Nasa black list are county returning officers Nancy Kariuki (Mombasa), Sidney Namulungu (Kisii), and Silas Rotich (Nakuru).

On Sunday, Mr Odinga had listed, among his nine demands, the resignation of the officials as one of the “irreducible minimums” before the coalition can go to the ballot for the repeat election.

“Kenyans are coming for you. Salvage what you can and run. There will be no election with you in office,” Mr Odinga told the IEBC officials on Sunday.

Nasa has also called for the cancellation of the tender to print ballot papers awarded to Dubai-based Al-Ghurair, a change of the elections technology provider and an audit of the IEBC servers before the poll.

CHANGE SUPPLIERS

At the press conference, Mr Odinga said it is not too late to change the two suppliers.

“Time is not a constraint here. We know up to five companies that are ready to supply the new ICT system even in 30 days if the contract is given today. We cannot be giving IEBC Sh15 billion and we do not get things right,” said Mr Odinga.

“There is no reason at all as to why it is not possible to get another supplier,” he added.

At the same time, Mr Odinga said the coalition will only attend a planned meeting with the electoral commission if it answers to its list of demands they say must be met before the October 17 fresh presidential election.

IEBC MEETING

IEBC has scheduled a consultative meeting between President Kenyatta and Mr Odinga on Wednesday to agree on the issues that the National Super Alliance has raised before the repeat election is held.

The meeting will take place at the Bomas of Kenya which served as the commission’s national tallying centre.

“I am positive that we are going to sit down and for the sake of the country. We shall come up with a solution to any issues that might be a roadblock to the holding of the elections on October 17,” IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati said last week, before the commission confirmed on Twitter on Friday the sending of the invites to the two protagonists.

In the Wednesday meeting, IEBC hopes to go through Nasa’s demands, one by one, while taking considerations from the Jubilee side to achieve a middle ground.