Open letter to IEBC chairman Issack Hassan

What you need to know:

  • No one really fights about the Safaricom CEO's position in order to control the billions of shillings that float around the M-Pesa ecosystem.
  • Specifically, tell us what you have done to ensure that the Biometric Voter Registration, the Electronic Voter ID and the Results Transmission System will not fail.
  • Without such guarantees, be assured that you will continue to attract "Teargas Monday" until one of the players plants their tribesman at the helm.

Greetings, Mr Issack Hassan.

These last few weeks must have been tough for you and the commission, particularly Mondays, which have come to be dubbed "Teargas Mondays".

It is difficult to referee a bunch of players who all want to kick you out, but only differ on the method and procedure of doing it.

What is worse is that the players are only interested in planting their tribesman as your replacement, without caring if you have addressed the challenges we collectively experienced as a nation during the 2013 election.

In other words, it seems like the players are keener on exploiting the gaps experienced in the previous election rather than fixing them. It’s very similar to the corruption scourge in Kenya – each player sees the scourge, but each one struggles to be King in order to own, rather than fix it.

That is why as citizens, we must stand up and change the narrative. If our electoral systems were foolproof in terms of being simple, secure, verifiable, transparent and accountable, no one would be wasting their time fighting about your job.

OUR MAN

No one really fights about the Safaricom CEO's position in order to control the billions of shillings that float around the M-Pesa ecosystem. This is because M-Pesa works, and it works simply by being secure, verifiable, transparent and accountable.

Putting one’s tribesman at the helm of Safaricom does not in any way favour the "strongholds" where his or her tribesmen dominate.

An M-Pesa transaction made from Kisumu has exactly the same weight and transparency as one made from Kiambu, irrespective of who the CEO at Safaricom is. Similarly, an M-Pesa transaction made from Mombasa counts as much as one made from Uasin Gishu. 

The transparency and openness of M-Pesa automatically depoliticises and reduces the pressure to appoint "our" man at the helm of the M-Pesa value chain, and "our" man or "your" man at the top of the M-Pesa management has absolutely no advantage or disadvantage to pass around to different interest groups

Flipping this argument around, this implies that the level of pressure to get or retain "our" man at the helm of the IEBC is directly proportional to the opportunity that the IEBC presents in terms of being able to exploit its weak, non-transparent systems.

AFTER FAILURE

In other words, if the IEBC had put in place systems that were simple, secure, verifiable, transparent and accountable, neither of the players would see any advantage in coming after your job so aggressively. It would not matter who is at the top of the IEBC and there would be no advantage or disadvantage to spread around various interest groups.

That both players are bitterly and tragically arguing over your job is an indication that the systems that you are running may not be entirely foolproof and have gaps worth exploiting.

Some of these gaps were evident in the 2013 general elections and revolved around the spectacular failure of the electronic aspects of that election.

Perhaps to reduce the pressure on your job, you might want to explain to Kenyans how you have since improved the systems to a point where whoever is in charge at the IEBC will not have any advantage to offer any particular group.

Specifically, Sir, tell us what you have done to ensure that the Biometric Voter Registration, the Electronic Voter ID and the Results Transmission System will not fail.

More importantly, show us how the alternative plans you have in case of electronic failure are equally secure, verifiable, transparent and accountable.

Without such guarantees, be assured that you will continue to attract "Teargas Monday" until one of the players plants their tribesman at the helm.

Yours sincerely,

John

Mr Walubengo is a lecturer at the Multimedia University of Kenya, Faculty of Computing and IT. Email: [email protected], Twitter: @jwalu