The Chairman of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Mr. Wafula Chebukati on 18th November 2020 published through the print media and on the Commission website on behalf of the IEBC “an open letter to the people of Kenya” setting out the Commissions comments, views on the recommendation of the Building Bridges Initiative Steering Committee’s Final Report unveiled on 26th October 2020. For those of us how have been robotically saying they support BBI as per its final recommendations they better take a moment and re-read the proposals made as regards elections management and the views of the IEBC (in the open letter) the body charged by the current Constitution and which is eminently qualified to tell us what is “the elephant in the room” on the perennial question of disputed election results (read the Presidential Elections results).
It is stupidity of the highest order for anyone promoting the BBI to only consider the politicians views on electoral management and ignore the entity that is in the arena of managing elections. Politicians are conflicted on the question of elections management simply because they are not impartial on the issue. They approach it from very narrow partisan interests. Indeed the first and last problem on any fiasco in electoral management is the politicians, the political parties that live the lie that one can go to an election that is competed and yet not be prepared to accept that there can be only one winner period. The IEBC in its open letter to the people of Kenya made the following recommendations to enhance electoral Democracy
i) Maintain the current independent expert model in appointment of the Chairperson and Commissioners of IEBC to guarantee impartiality. Stagger recruitment of commissioners to facilitate transfer of knowledge, institutional memory and growth. Retain the current practice of hiring core professional and permanent secretariat staff for efficient, transparent and credible elections.
ii) Address the root causes of negative ethnicity and mistrust amongst political players in order to reduce high costs associated with mitigating these challenges through electoral processes.
iii) Conclude electoral legal reforms at least two years to elections, in line with international best practices, to provide for adequate time for implementations by the EMB. However, in the current circumstances the electoral legal reforms should be concluded not later than one year to the 2022 general elections.
iv) Entrench the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission fund in the Constitution to give the Commission autonomy to manage its funds. However, at the very least funding for the Commission activities should be in tandem with its 5 year electoral cycle, as opposed to providing funds in the year of elections.
v) Electoral laws should be reviewed with a view to making them less prescriptive and to enable the commission flexibility in administrative processes and reduction in cost of elections.
vi) Enhance engagement between the IEBC and political parties through the Political Parties Liaison Committee with a view to enhancing electoral democracy in Kenya
If BBI’s objective was to help resolve the perennial General Elections violence and the attendant perceived lack of inclusivity that flares up and convulses the country at the period then it behoves all of us to be certain, sure that the recommendations made in BBI address the issues thoroughly, effectively rather than make impractical proposals that may very well make the problem worse than before.
If IEBC has grave misgivings about the proposals in the BBI Final Report then we had better sit up and relook at them and get better consensus recommendations and more so from impartial experts not the politicians who are myopic in their blind pursuit of political power.
The BBI being threatened to be rammed down our throats by hook or crook may we repeat be a poisoned chalice. We must verify the verifications and final recommendations of the BBI Steering Committee. The devil is in the details. Politicians are too lazy, greedy to scrutinize details. The people are warned. Beware that IEBC has raised the flag. We ignore the warnings to our social, economic and political peril.
