IEBC has to avoid the 2013 mistakes to achieve legitimacy and acceptance

I hope that Ahmed Issack Hassan and his fellow IEBC commissioners and chief executive Ezra Chiloba are learning from the depressing events in Burundi.

For, in a few short months, Burundi has gone from being a somewhat promising country to the brink of collapse, all because of the decision of one man: Pierre Nkurunziza. His decision to run for president again is the cause of all the strife, tensions and chaos that have engulfed Burundi.

It does not matter now whether Mr Nkurunziza is right about the legality of a potential third term. His decision — and consequent manipulation of institutions — has taken Burundi back to its “basket case” status that took 10 long years to slowly cast off. And as always, it is the ordinary people in this third-poorest nation on earth who suffer: More than 150,000 have fled the country, dozens have been killed by police as they peacefully protested, and now a violent insurgency looms.

This is about legitimacy, not legality. Something can be legal but it need not be legitimate: Legitimacy comes from widespread acceptance, even when there is disagreement. And legitimacy is the first step toward credibility.

The IEBC had legality, legitimacy and credibility going into the 2013 elections. But it squandered its credibility and legitimacy by its conduct of the elections — multiple registers, non-working BVR kits, EVID kits, fake “computer crashes” and faulty electronic results transmission — no matter the ruling of the Supreme Court. And it reverted to the same manual system, without any checks and balances, which caused the crisis in 2007.

OPEN BIAS

To date we have no clue about the exact numbers in the voter register, which turned out to be a database instead. A register is a closed document which can only be changed through a transparent process, while a database can be manipulated at any time by anyone with access to it.

The IEBC chairman revealed his open bias against a presidential candidate in his final submissions to the Supreme Court, which alone should have discredited the election process had the judges read it. And some officials of the IEBC have been adversely mentioned in a completed corruption case in the UK, which should have led to stepping aside, if not hiding in shame.

And now the IEBC has published its strategic plan, without the input of all the stakeholders — political parties, civil society and voters —who are the owners of the election. It is a massive mistake, and gross naivety, for Mr Chiloba to call it an internal document! Nothing election-related is internal especially since we all know that the worst of times in Kenya come with elections.

But thankfully this huge blunder can be rectified. First, Mr Chiloba needs to admit that the process was flawed, and then, as the new and as-yet-untainted CEO, convene meetings with stakeholders, civil society and voters to make the necessary amendments to legitimise it and make it credible within the next six months. After all strategic plans are living documents that are changed by circumstances.

Second, the commissioners need to go, and go soon. They may be sitting pretty for now thinking that support from Jubilee is enough, but as Burundi shows us, issues around elections need more than simple 50 percent support, which the IEBC does not have at the moment. It is not about being right or wrong here. It is about legitimacy and credibility. Their intransigence increases tensions, including threats to boycott the next elections, which no one, least of all Jubilee, should want.

In fact, more than anyone, Jubilee needs a credible and legitimate IEBC for the consequent legitimacy that they have clearly lacked since 2013. It is this lack of legitimacy that forces Uhuruto to assert every month that they “won” the elections, and which explains many of their ill-thought-out decisions.

Remember, Mwai Kibaki never once reminded us that he won in 2002 for that was a legitimate and credible election. Pity that his one action in 2007 — like Nkurunziza’s now — overshadows almost everything else he ever did.

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