Treasury asks IEBC to work with Sh17b for Kenya's poll

By Steve Mkawale

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) will now have to work on a shoestring budget to prepare and run the General Election.

Treasury has finally given its budget for the elections — billed to be the biggest and most expensive because of the number of ballots that will be involved.

Finance Minister Njeru Githae said on Tuesday that Sh17.5 billion allocated to the commission in the 2012 - 2013 National Budget was enough.

“Money allocated to IEBC is enough to conduct fair and credible elections,” said Githae when he appeared before the Parliamentary Budget Committee. The decision by the Treasury has complicated matters for IEBC, which had earlier presented a Sh31.5 billion budget for the polls.

The commission has been under pressure to scale down its budget, with Parliament forcing it to twice cut it down from the initial Sh41.4 billion it had requested Treasury to Sh31.5 billion.

The Parliamentary Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs made the first request to scale down the budget during its meetings with IEBC officers.

Legal expenses

In its revised budget, the IEBC excluded Sh5 billion for a presidential re-run and reduced earlier estimates for legal expenses and voter education. IEBC Chairman Issack Hassan had told the committee that cutting down the budget would adversely affect preparation for the polls as the bulk was to go into financing capital investments like electronic voter registration machines.

“At Sh17.5 billion, it is extremely difficult to run this election, but if that is the amount available, we will be forced to considerably reduce the number of polling stations.

“The greatest danger with reducing the number of polling stations is that we risk conducting the elections for a period exceeding a day,” said Hassan. With the approved budget, IEBC will be forced to reduce the number of polling stations from 45,000 to 40,000.

The Standard learned on Tuesday that other measures that the commission is likely to resort to include reducing the number of staff to be hired on temporary basis and hiring of vehicles instead of purchasing.

Vehicles

“We might be forced to reconsider the biometric voter registration and procurement of vehicles but this will pose serious logistical challenges to the commission,” Hassan told the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee during a recent sitting at County Hall, Nairobi. While critics maintain that the IEBC budget is extravagant, the commission insists that it will be unfair to compare the cost per unit of conducting elections in other countries with Kenya’s.

Mr James Oswago, the IEBC Chief Executive Officer, said Kenya was beginning the electoral infrastructure afresh and hence the huge financial investment required that includes acquisition of electronic voter registration equipment, new ballot boxes as well conducting fresh voter registration and civic education. On Tuesday, Githae told the Parliamentary Budget Committee that the ministry had no plans to allocate additional funds to the commission.

Githae appeared before the Budget Committee ahead of the reading of the 2012/13 financial statement on June 14.

According to the Constitution, the minister’s statement should take into account the view of Kenyans and that of the committee.

Deploy officers

Meanwhile, Githae has challenged all Government departments to speed up deployment of officers to the counties and open offices.

He assured Kenyans that the Government had enough funds for the devolved system.

The minister revealed that the Treasury was in the process of training staff and opening county Treasuries. Githae challenged the newly appointed County Commissioners to help in identifying offices and residences for governors as a stop-gap ahead of their election.

Last month in its report, the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee noted with great concern the high costs relating to electoral, governance and other constitutional matters, and recommended that Parliament, the Judiciary and the Law Society of Kenya establish a mechanism — by way of legislation — to cap them.

Electronic links

It further recommended that in future, the IEBC electronically links its voter register to the Immigration and Registration of Persons Department so as to update its records each time a person becomes an eligible voter, or dies.

During committee hearings, IEBC had expressed fears that lack of sufficient funds might force them to extend Election Day by two to three days.

“Don’t cripple the commission, because as we try to cut down on the budget, you may end up affecting the core operations. Treasury loves cutting down budgets, they derive pleasure from that,” Hassan pleaded.

Oswago said a runoff was likely, adding that it was possible that none of the presidential contenders could raise the 50 per cent-plus-one vote required to assume the country’s leadership.

“Let us not forget that we will be doing a re-run for the first time. In France, they have been doing it for years and I don’t think you would want this commission to make even 0.00 per cent of a mistake. So we want to make sure that we meet the highest expectation of Kenyans, so allow us to do that,” he said.

But now, the commission will have to work with a lean budget. The 2007 General Election cost taxpayers Sh7 billion but brought misery to the country following the post-election violence.