Civil society casts doubt on IEBC's preparedness

IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati and vice chair Juliana Cherera. [Esther Jeruto, Standard]

Days after the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) said its voters’ register was credible, fresh questions have emerged on its preparedness for the August 9 General Election.

Nine civil society organisations have written to IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati highlighting 10 areas they say could compromise the agency’s ability to conduct credible polls. Some issues, the said, have remained unsolved since 2013.

In a letter dated June 2, the organisations allege massive “inefficiencies, negligence and outright corruption” in IEBC’s procurement and other electoral management operations, which highlight the credibility of the voters’ register and security of IEBC’s electronic systems among other issues.

The organisations, in the letter signed by Kenya Human Rights Commission Executive Director Davis Malombe, cited a 2017 report by audit firm KPMG which exposed vulnerability of the IEBC’s electronic systems.

“The KPMG 2017 audit report raised concerns about unauthorised entry and capacity to change, delete, amend or add changes to records, without any trace whatsoever. Your recent public comments about transfer of voters in the register without authority is alarming as this is one of the issues flagged in 2017 and reflects a failure to address past problems,” the letter reads.

The nine organisations are Informaction, Angaza Movement, Africa Centre for Open Governance (Africog), Muslim Human Rights (Muhuri), International Commission of Jurists Kenya (ICJ-Kenya), Inuka Kenya, Midrift Network, Haki Yetu and Crawn Trust.

The IEBC has already had to defend itself against claims by Deputy President William Ruto that a million voters from his stronghold were struck out of the register.

It has not helped that Chebukati and IEBC CEO Marjan Hussein Marjan have contradicted each other on whether there was a breach of its electronic system, leading to the illegal mass transfer of voters.

On Wednesday, Chebukati said no breach had happened, contradicting his confirmation on Monday of the illegal transfers, which would only occur through an internal or external breach of its electronic voters’ register. Chebukati said the IEBC would investigate the matter and bring the perpetrators to book. That followed a memo in which Marjan asked electoral staff to reverse transfers not accompanied by statutory forms, yet another confirmation of an internal and external breach.

The organisations further said independent organs that play a part in delivering a credible election of lacking proper coordination, saying that it had drained the faith that citizens have in the electoral process. They said proper coordination would address gaps in leadership and integrity among other issues.

“The release by the EACC of a list of aspirants for various positions with integrity issues is an opportunity for the IEBC to take leadership, and deal with the significant integrity raised. We demand that IEBC have the courage to use their constitutional powers and coordinate their actions for meaningful action on enforcing Chapter Six and other legal and constitutional provisions,” they said.

Equally critical, the organisations accused the polls agency of perennially “running down the clock” as the Chebukati-led IEBC chases statutory constitutional deadlines necessary for the conduct of the August polls.

One such deadline is IEBC’s testing of its electoral technology, which must be done by June 9, a deadline Chebukati recently said they would beat. “We remind you that in the test runs in 2013 and 2017 the technology did not pass the usability test as it collapsed across the country. The KIEMS kits did not capture and record all voters’ data and a number did not have power back up,” the organisations warned, saying IEBC had not solved past issues and had not held anyone for system failures.

It is some of these failures that led to the nullification of the presidential election in 2017. The Supreme Court faulted the IEBC’s vote transmission, which the court found wanting on several grounds, including the transmission of results in areas outside gazette polling stations.

 On May 31, Chebukati said in a statement that the IEBC had “adhered to the Supreme Court judgement and orders of Presidential Election Petition Number 1 of 2017 in all its processes including results transmission”.