Allegations of poll-fixing damaging to IEBC’s credibility

-Editorial

If the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission’s (IEBC) top official caught on tape knew what he said he knew about the electoral process in 2013, then he owes it to himself and to Kenyans to explain his claims.

Taken at face value, the official was warning one side of the skullduggery its competitors were employing to win the elections.

Taken deeply, the official was playing with fire.

God-forbid what would have happened if the recording was played then.

KTN’s-award winning duo of Mohammed Ali and John Allan Namu lay their hands on a recording of a telephone conversation allegedly between a top IEBC official and an Orange Democratic Movement party official purporting that the 2013 General Election was fixed.

The in-depth conversation suggests that IEBC had been compromised and that in fact, the elections were rigged in favour of the Jubilee candidate Uhuru Kenyatta.

While many Kenyans have accepted the outcome of the election petition as declared by the Supreme Court and moved on, the revelations brings into focus the conduct of IEBC officials.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is such reckless and unconfirmed claims that fuelled the mayhem in the aftermath of the declaration of Mwai Kibaki as President in December 2007.

The infamous remark by Samuel Kivuitu, the chairman of the defunct Electoral Commission of Kenya (now deceased) that his staff were cooking the results in the field was an indictment of an incompetent elections body that pushed the country to the precipice.

This comment than anything else, handed Kibaki a tainted and a disputed second mandate.

So whereas the official may have thought that he was alerting one side to what their political competitors were up to, it is indeed irresponsible that he never came out in public to reveal what he knew in the lead to the elections D-day.

What clearly comes out is the betrayal of the oath of office by an officer entrusted with official secrets and one who swore an oath of fidelity to the office entrusted to him.

Kenyans had placed enormous investment emotionally and financially in the election and remarks as those captured in the tape only help to heighten tension and weaken belief in institutions.

And therefore, if, as he seems to suggest, the IEBC failed Kenyans in 2013, then he too failed Kenya.

The lingering suspicion that the election was stitched-up is not good for Kenya’s young democracy.

Yet this attitude is symptomatic of the general malaise in public offices where office-holders serve narrow and parochial interests at the expense of public interest.

It is as true of the IEBC as it is of many other offices where probity is absent. One glaring example is the Judicial Service Commission where its decision to send away the former Chief Registrar of the Judiciary was clouded in intrigue and claims of the partiality of its commissioners. That decision was declared unlawful later.

The least the IEBC could do to secure the confidence of Kenyans in elections and in its role as an unbiased referee is to conduct thorough investigations and purge of its ranks officers who betrayed the trust of their employer.

It is its credibility that is on the line. It must work to reclaim it.