New IEBC chiefs unlikely to live up to public expectations

Pandemonium is defined variously as ‘wild uproar or unrestrained disorder; tumult or chaos’ It’s a word that comes very close to describing the build up to the upcoming General Election. Somehow, we always manage to make a scheduled event that we have had five years to plan ahead for seem like some unforeseen emergency. I am specifically referring to appointment of the election body and its operations once appointed. The United States is having a presidential election early next month. Is it not surprising that while we have heard a lot about the candidates, we are yet to see a single headline about who will run those elections? Similarly, it is possible to follow politics in the UK without ever coming across a reference to the body that oversees elections there. In the context of our politics this is very strange indeed.

It is disturbing that we find need to overhaul our electoral body every election cycle. It is downright depressing that despite all these changes, the problem of rigging does not go away. It is difficult to acquire a conviction that that is about to change. The thinking that we can get angels to head the IEBC who will banish all election malpractices is tempting. If an experiment always gives the same results, it is possible by induction to infer that future similar set ups will yield comparable results.

While hope springs eternal, why would the incoming commissioners not go down the route of the ones who just resigned? What lesson do people learn if the consequence of deliberately mismanaging an election and profiting in the process is a send-off package rumoured to be almost a quarter of a billion shillings? While we had ample time since the Chickengate revelations to make an example of errant officials, so charged is the politics around who heads the IEBC that the last thing the concerned parties were worried about is a day in court.

What keeps people straight is the certainty that deviant behaviour will have consequences. If one day all banks decided to operate on trust, and put a pile of cash in their halls with request to customers to fill forms, give them to a cashier but make the actual deposit or withdrawal by adding to or taking from the pile of cash, many an ordinarily honest Kenyan would fail to be delivered from temptation. In other words, the cashiers would hold hefty deposit slips while the cash pile would deplete rapidly. We have so far failed, and because of the partisan nature of appointment of IEBC officials, continue to fail to take action on those who willfully deviate from their duties. The overwhelming temptation to engage in malfeasance at the IEBC is a constant. We are looking for a mythical human being who can withstand constant exposure to strong narcotics without getting addicted. The solution lies in eliminating the permissive environment.

For sure, the problem is complex and does not lend itself to simple single shot solutions. For instance, we all know that the current effort to appoint new commissioners and a chairman are not about finding the most suitable people for the jobs, because heaven forbid, that they happened to have a Luo or Kikuyu heritage. In fact, the de facto position is that members of the Luo and Kikuyu cannot possibly head the body for obvious reasons. So strong is the presumption of bias. It would be naïve to expect that the political parties will put integrity above trust and loyalty in their appointments.

Only a concerted grassroots effort by all Kenyans can solve this problem. If only we can make the negative social premium on those with ill-gotten wealth and the positive premium on those with decency and sincerity enough. The business of retaining power is a matter of life and death apparently.