It's all systems go as key transition team starts work

Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta displays his certificates of oath from Chief Justice Willy Mutunga during the swearing-in ceremony at Kasarani Stadium in Nairobi, on April 9, 2013. [File, Standard]

In just one month, one of the four men in this year’s presidential race shall enjoy a provision of high-end security detail and unlimited access to security and intelligence reports. This is in accordance with services due to a President-elect, should the August 9 poll proceed hitch-free with a clear winner.

Unless the poll is marred by irregularities and its outcome is contested in the Supreme Court, one of these contestants – David Mwaure, Raila Odinga, William Ruto, and George Wajackoyah – will be sitting legally pretty as President Uhuru Kenyatta’s successor. That is how fast the next few days will pass by and how near Kenyans are to their next Head of State.     

Already Uhuru, who technically becomes a private citizen from August 23 – seven days after the last allowable day for declaration of the poll winner by the electoral commission – has unveiled a Transition Committee that will oversee the handover of power.  

This implies that curtains are finally coming down on the high-voltage campaign, which has been marked by contests of verbal attacks by politicians and crowd numbers in rallies, a colourful display of party outfits and mascots, spiced up by opinion poll projections.  

With barely a month to go to the D-Day, questions have been raised about the capacity of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission’s (IEBC) to conduct the August 9 elections.

From the agency’s earlier postponement of the certification and gazettement of the voters’ register, the pending cases of some candidates – in Nairobi, Mombasa and Kiambu counties – which are still stuck in courtrooms, and lately the “small misunderstanding” over the use of a manual register at polling stations, the agency has been tottering on several fronts at every stage.     

Azimio la Umoja-One Kenya’s legal adviser Paul Mwangi, who recently dispatched a letter to IEBC with demands and queries, is, for instance, unhappy. Asked whether he had questions about the agency's competency, he responded rather dejectedly: “Let us just say concern. Yes, we are concerned about critical issues, which they are yet to address.”

But the Kenya Kwanza team claims to be “just fine” with the ongoing poll preparations. Their only bone of contention, according to Dr Edward Kisiang’ani, a member of Ruto’s Presidential Campaign Council, has everything to do with the current administration and not IEBC or its chairman Wafula Chebukati.

“We have no specific demands to IEBC or Mr Chebukati. We just want them to do their job as independent entities to ensure our vote – and indeed everyone’s – is protected. Nonetheless, our misgivings stem from the fact that some of the agencies that IEBC is dependent on in its delivery of free and fair elections are government run and controlled,” says Kisiang’ani, claiming that the bulk of these agencies and their managers have publicly endorsed the candidature of “our main rival”.

The real elephant in the room, though, and one that most stakeholders including Chief Justice Martha Koome, have pointed out is the development of a constitutionally compliant protocol for transmission of results. Three months ago, the CJ implored IEBC to address the structural issues that led to the nullification of the presidential poll in 2017.

If IEBC fails to put its house in order, she warned, the Chebukati-led team would be confronted with a similar ruling. Raila and Ruto teams have similarly expressed concern over this matter.

The IEBC, which has lined up another meeting with presidential candidates next week, has on its part never given up on explaining and defending its actions. In the latest ping-pong over the manual register, for instance, the IEBC officials have conceded the book and the electronic avenues of identifying a voter will both be used, but the latter only as a backup in circumstances electronic identification flops.

And to demonstrate transparency in the ballot printing exercise, Chebukati has advised that “all stakeholders can schedule a visit between July 15 and July 20 during which time the presidential ballot papers will be printed and packaged for shipping to Kenya”.

Even then, the chairman says the commission remains “concerned and takes great exception to the rising propaganda by gutter press, social media and some political players on its members and staff, and distributed in various social media channels by innocent Kenyans”.

And as the transition team appointed by Uhuru embarks on duty, one of the members who declined to be named because he has no “express authority” just yet to talk to the media, told The Standard that they were duty bound “to work out on several scenarios” for effective execution of their task.

“While the major plan is largely the same, we have to plan around the four scenarios involving President Mwaure, President Odinga, President Ruto and President Wajackoyah. There could be slight changes in preparations of each of the four, depending on their taste, approach, and security needs prompted by the relations between the outgoing President and the President-elect,” said the committee member.

Indeed, one of the most chaotic handover ceremonies witnessed in the country was in 2002 at Nairobi’s Uhuru Park before a rowdy ecstatic crowd. President Daniel Moi of the then ruling party, Kanu, braved the hostility at the park from crowds to handover to opposition candidate Mwai Kibaki. So chaotic was the scene that Head of Civil Service, Dr Sally Kosgey, left the venue with only one shoe.

A win for Ruto could equally present a challenging moment for the organisers and the security teams. The hostility between Uhuru and his deputy has been so pronounced that many have wondered loudly, how the handover scenario would turn out.

“Luckily, we have moved on as a country from such haphazard arrangements. Now there is a specific law that sets the assumption of office for the President in place. Either way, the handover will proceed well,” says the source.

Except for the hurried swearing in of Kibaki at dusk in 2007 at State House, the procedure of swearing in a president is clearly stipulated in law. Uhuru and his deputy Ruto were the first beneficiaries of this colourful arrangement in April 2013 and October 2017. Before that, a president was sworn in soon after being declared winner. In some instances, it took a day or two, but in 2007, it took a record 27 minutes!

The transition committee, whose members include Interior Cabinet Secretary, Fred Matiang’i, Secretary to the Cabinet Joseph Kinyua, Chief of Defence Forces Gen Robert Kibochi, Director of National Intelligence Service Philip Kameru, Inspector General of Police Hillary Mutyambai, and Chief Registrar of the Judiciary Anne Amadi, among others, is mandated by law to facilitate the handing over process by the outgoing President to the President-elect.

The Assumption of the Office of the President Act No 21 of 2012 provides for the procedure and ceremony for the assumption of office of the President-elect. Other members of the committee include Attorney General Kihara Kariuki, Solicitor General Ken Ogeto, and Principal Secretaries Karanja Kibicho, Jerome Ochieng, Julius Muia, Macharia Kamau, Julius Korir and Joe Okudo.

Yesterday, Police Spokesman Bruno Shioso sought to reassure Kenyans that the police force, charged with the duty of manning poling centers among other related security tasks, was ready for assignment and raring to go.

“We are well resourced, retooled and our officers have been adequately trained on election security and public order management,” he told The Saturday Standard.    

With close to 46,232 polling stations spread across the country, the police have always been overstretched during the polling exercise. Besides crowd control and manning these stations, these officers monitor and offer security in the transportation of ballot and other election materials. This challenge has been magnified over the years, courtesy of the growing number of voters and now the six ballots contest since the promulgation of the 2010 Constitution, as opposed the previous three featuring a councilor, MP and President.

To bridge this security gap, Shioso says the police force has teamed up with members of other security forces: “This is a collaborative exercise and we have accordingly assembled enough personnel with the help of from other agencies to deploy enough officers with a view to securing the elections.”

And because of their central role in the election process, through communicating poll related policies from government and the electoral agency as well relaying information from the players in the exercise – the candidates – the media has been highly involved in preparedness for the upcoming exercise.  

Noting that more than 70 percent of the journalists covering elections this time around will be doing so for the first time, Victor Bwire, the Media Council of Kenya’s (MCK) Director of Training and Development, stresses the need for equipping members of the Fourth Estate with apt skills.

In 2007, the media was accused – rightly or wrongly – for partly fanning political animosities in the general elections, leading to post-election violence that left over 1,000 people dead and thousands of others homeless: “We have since moved from this unfortunate part of our history – courtesy of a series of training of journalists on sensitive and truthful report. Other than the occasional biased reporting of some individual, the Kenyan media is a lot more polished and responsible this time around," Bwire says. 

According to the Secretary General of the Kenya Union of Journalists (KUJ) Eric Oduor, the journalists’ union has similarly been involved in the training of journalists across the country since last year on effective and balanced coverage of elections, besides being offered tips on their personal safety.

“Our focus has geared at enhancing access to information for the journalists. As we get to the homestretch, are training emphasis are now on results management and transmission,” says the KUJ Spokesperson.

The union, on behalf of the Kenya Media Sector Working Group (KMSWG), has since signed a memorandum of understanding with the IEBC, aimed at aiding promoting working relations between the two groups and more so helping journalists to speedily access quality information.

Aware of the pivotal space Kenya occupies in the region and on the continent, IEBC and MCK have also roped in foreign correspondents in the training sessions.

“Some of our international colleagues have, in previous instances, filed inaccurate reports largely out of inadequate knowledge of local the political landscape than sheer malice. So this time we want to ensure we are all on the same page, and where possible also learn from their experiences on electoral coverage in other countries,” says Bwire.