It will take miracle for Chebukati to referee credible election
Wafula Chebukati at the Supreme Court in Nairobi on January 20, 2017 when he took the oath of office to become the chairperson of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission. PHOTO | JEFF ANGOTE | NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
Can he, for instance, publicly admit interference in the election by the National Intelligence Service if he were to find that the complaints by the Opposition about the intelligence agency’s involvement in the voter registration were true?
Does he have the courage to resist interference in the election by any other national security agency?
Of course, time will tell – just like it will about Mr Chebukati’s ability to steer the IEBC out of the familiar procurement scandals.
Wafula Chebukati, the new chairman of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), will need a near miracle to referee a credible General Election later this year.
Perhaps it is just as well that one of Mr Chebukati’s first acts in office was an invitation to religious leaders to say prayers for him and his senior staff.
With the election only seven months away, time is clearly not on his side.
He has two weeks to meet his target of enrolling six million additional voters.
A majority of these are desperate school leavers who have difficulty obtaining the national identity card because they haven’t brought a bribe for the officials.
Then there are the men who love their bottle so much that they have deposited their prized identification documents with the local barman as collateral!
In the pastoralist areas, folks in the grip of a fierce drought have to choose between visiting the voter registration centre and taking the long walk in search of water and pasture.
Alas, it would seem even the rain gods have conspired against Mr Chebukati!
Yet to salvage anything from what is increasingly looking like mission impossible, Mr Chebukati has to stop looking up to the heavens for solutions.
The answers lie with the earthly political gods, who hired him but are busy drilling holes in his boat.
The standoff with the Opposition over the integrity of the voter register suggests that the ongoing mass registration is actually the easy part for the IEBC.
SOME UNDERSTANDING
Mr Chebukati, who reportedly tried his hands in opposition politics in the past, should use his political connections to arrive at some understanding on who should audit the register and purge it of ghost voters.
Not that the IEBC boss has any options after admitting last week the existence of about 128,000 cases of double or multiple registration.
A much tougher challenge for him is how far he can go showing an honest gesture to win public confidence without stepping on some powerful toes.
Can he, for instance, publicly admit interference in the election by the National Intelligence Service if he were to find that the complaints by the Opposition about the intelligence agency’s involvement in the voter registration were true?
Does he have the courage to resist interference in the election by any other national security agency? Of course, time will tell – just like it will about Mr Chebukati’s ability to steer the IEBC out of the familiar procurement scandals.
The award of a tender for a digital election management system has been challenged by a Nairobi-based company alleging manipulation by a rival that controversially supplied the biometric voter registration kits for the 2013 General Election. If Mr Chebukati ever needed one more reason to solicit prayers, this is it.
Otieno Otieno is chief subeditor, ‘Business Daily’.
Twitter: @otienootieno
