Why CORD wants IEBC overhauled

CORD co-principals Kalonzo Musyoka (left) Moses Wetang’ula (right, seated) and other leaders during the OKOA Kenya press conference in Nairobi on Wednesday. [PHOTO: ELVIS OGINA/ STANDARD]

CORD is digging in for a fight to push the electoral commission out of office even as it weighs options after the aborted referendum bid.

The coalition has insisted that the country cannot go to the 2017 polls with the Independent, Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) as currently constituted.

Still smarting from the verdict on the Okoa Kenya Referendum initiative, CORD has slammed IEBC’s alleged continued ‘contempt’ for the Opposition’s views, which it says is polarising the country.

“CORD represents a very big and growing constituency in the country. Despite this fact, IEBC has openly demonstrated its indifference to and contempt for our views and concerns. As it does that, IEBC is also openly polarising the country between Jubilee, to which it defers, and CORD, for which it has only contempt and hostility,” said CORD leader Raila Odinga.

“We are left with no option but to object to the holding of 2017 elections under IEBC. We are going to use every legal means to get IEBC out of office. It is in the national interest and our future stability to ensure IEBC does not manage next year’s elections,” he added.

The electoral commission this week declared that CORD had failed to meet the constitutional threshold that requires one million signatures from registered voters to hold a referendum. IEBC sighted anomalies in some of the signatures presented by CORD, which saw the eventual number of those in support of the referendum fall short by over 100,000.

IEBC has said CORD will have to start its referendum push afresh, a verdict not taken well by the Opposition, who now accuse the electoral commission of working at the behest of the Jubilee administration to scuttle its referendum bid. The electoral commission has dismissed CORD’s assertions and outlined the processes it undertook in verifying the data.

This comes amid questions on the commission’s capacity to do so, and the country’s lack of a substantive law to guide how such a process should be managed.

In keeping with Article 257 (4) of the Constitution, IEBC is mandated to verify that at least one million registered voters support the initiative. Once the commission is satisfied on this score, it moves to the next step of verifying that the signatures appended are valid signatures of the registered voters.

But the question of exactly how the signatures were verified remains, with an Election Observation Group (ELOG) saying IEBC had no repository of signatures against which Okoa Kenya signatures could be verified. While noting that there were loopholes in the collection of signatures,Elog chair Brian Weke argued that the verification process was conducted with no set guidelines to warrant fairness.

TNA chairman Johnson Sakaja, however, says CORD is to blame for the IEBC verdict.

“The manner in which it (CORD) has dealt with Okoa Kenya shows absolute incompetence and ineptitude within its ranks. They should not blame Jubilee for asking logical questions with respect to an electoral process and the manner in which verification should have been done. If anything, the questions we were asking should have come from CORD many months before,” he says.

Mr Sakaja had, in earlier media reports, challenged IEBC to reveal its signature verification process.

Githunguri MP Njoroge Baiya says CORD leaders are being irresponsible in their utterances given that IEBC has given reasons for rejection of some of the data presented for the Okoa Kenya drive.

“This is the same song we have been hearing when one of the players in the electoral process quarrels with the referee when the game doesn’t go their way. The current IEBC was constituted with the input of some of the members within CORD, under the Kibaki-Raila Coalition government. We have the law which spells out how to deal with IEBC. Are we saying we keep this aside and go with the findings of one party in the process?” he asks.

Constitutional lawyer Waikwa Wanyoike says besides starting to collect the signatures afresh, there is also the option, though slim, of CORD going to court to challenge IEBC, if there are found to be mistakes with the verification process. But this would require CORD to bring in experts who upon conducting an independent analysis of the data can prove its claims.

Lawyer Harun Ndubi also questions whether IEBC will take responsibility given that it has in the past also made mistakes in voter registration details. He faults the electoral commission and National Assembly for the country’s failure to have a substantive law in place that regulates the referendum process.

“Asking CORD to start collecting signatures afresh is unreasonable given the time and money that already went into the exercise. CORD has few options, other than to take the political route on this one,” he says.