IEBC decision taints elections with a whiff of ‘Chickengate’ scam

Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission Chairman Wafula Chebukati addresses journalists at Anniversary Towers in Nairobi on March 24, 2017 concerning the awarding of a tender to Safran Identity and Security. PHOTO | EVANS HABIL | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • So the IEBC decided it would not meet its operational timetable for elections on August 8, if it called for fresh tenders.
  • One must also wonder when, where and before whom Safran made its case outside the established procurement system.

History repeats itself. The tragedy is that we refuse to learn from it.

This must be the only conclusion following the decision by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission to by-pass procurement systems in awarding a direct contract for the supply of technical gizmos for the August 2017 General Election.

The end result is that well before the first ballot is cast, the election is already compromised; and the new-look commission has set itself up for failure and a welter of lawsuits.

It was like recurrence of a bad nightmare last week when the newish IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati, and Chief Executive Officer Ezra Chiloba, rewound almost exactly the same arguments employed by their disgraced predecessors in pushing for single sourcing ahead of the 2013 elections.

The outcome then was a flawed election. Ultimately the old team was hounded out of office after both sides of the political divide concurred that they could not be entrusted with another one.

In came the present team that is apparently keen to repeat the mistakes of the past.

What is so confounding is that they are doing so when it is still so fresh in the mind how in the run-up to the 2013 elections, the IEBC, then chaired by Mr Ahmed Issack Hassan, with Major (Rtd) James Oswago as the CEO, expended so much time and resources to justify single-sourcing for the vote collation, storage, tallying and transmission system.

The IEBC of the time hosted numerous gatherings for media and other interest groups to make the case for direct award of the contract.

The key excuse was that appeals by unsuccessful bidders had impacted badly on the electoral timetable.

Another was that voter registration had already been largely concluded using the existing biometric technology, so there was really no need to engage new suppliers.

COURT CASE
Mr Chebukati, Mr Chiloba and the rest of the current commission saw nothing strange in opening dusty archives to retrieve the playbook left behind by their departed predecessors.

Last week, they announced the cancellation of the tender for the supply of the Kenya Integrated Elections Management System; and award of a contract without competition to French firm Safran Identity and Security.

Justification for the strange decision, in a nutshell, was that the original tender was suspended by the Public Procurement Administrative Review Board last December.

The procurement resumed in January after the suspension was lifted, but only one of the 10 bidders, M/s Gemalto SA qualified for technical evaluation.

Again another challenge by an unsuccessful bidder halted the process, and the new suspension was not lifted until this month.

That was when the commission proceeded to financial evaluation and found that Gemalto’s quote of Sh5.2 billion was considerably higher than the budgetary provision of Sh3.8 billion.

So the IEBC decided it would not meet its operational timetable for elections on August 8, if it called for fresh tenders.

It also belatedly discovered that any new election results transmission system would have to be integrated with the existing Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) system that already has 19 million registered voters.

That would cause further delays because of the time needed for configuration, testing, training and deployment.

So the solution was to award the contract directly to Safran, which had mysteriously already undertaken to deliver the technology within the statutory timelines and budget.

BACKDOOR
If Safran is offering such an ideal package, one must wonder whether it ever actually submitted a bid that was superior to that of the competition, and if so, why it failed on the technical evaluation.

One must also wonder when, where and before whom Safran made its case outside the established procurement system so that it could win a recall through the backdoor.

The IEBC bosses then went ahead to provide the bizarre argument that in selecting Safran, they were building on the lessons learnt from 2013 in regard to ensuring compatible technology and the meeting of deadlines?

No, the lesson should have been on how not to run a suspect and flawed election, and especially not one that might appear tainted with ghosts of something called the “Chickengate” scandal.

For those not in the know, that was the scandal where previous electoral chiefs “ate chicken” in exchange for lucrative tenders.

Email: [email protected] Twitter: @MachariaGaitho