IEBC Is Incompetent And Ought To Be Disbanded SATURDAY, JULY 13, 2013 - 00:00 -- BY SAM OMWENGA I EBC’s handling of Kethi Kilonzo’s eligibility to vie for Makueni by- election is a reminder to those who may have forgotten how compromised and incompetent this commission is. One thing that can be said from the outset is, whether she registered or not, Kethi did not help her case at all in how she handled herself during the IEBC proceedings watched live as was the case during her steller performance when she represented AfriCog in its petition against the same body. Everyone who watched the IEBC proceedings could not but recognise the irony in how Kethi’s position that she is a registered voter was being shred to pieces much as she shred to pieces IEBC’s contention that it had conducted credible elections. We don’t know for a fact whether Kethi is a registered voter as IEBC has no credibility to tell us that. But we do know for a fact that IEBC did not conduct credible elections. That’s the conclusion anyone objective and putting aside partisanship must reach notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s intellectually shallow opinion to the contrary. The Elections Act requires the IEBC to compile and maintain a register of voters. Yet Kenyans went into elections without an official register of voters. This is a fact notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s finding to the contrary. The Act also requires that not later than two months before holding a general election, the registration of voters shall cease. But there was plenty of evidence adduced at the Raila and AfriCog petitions clearly showing that registration of likely phantom voters went on well beyond the registration deadline. How many of these phantom voters voted while legitimately registered voters were turned away? Granted Kethi did not vote for reasons she says are personal but did it really matter whether anyone voted in 2013 if it’s true that upwards of one million votes were cast by either phantom voters or double voting effectively negating the votes of one million legitimate voters? Put aside even the question of whether one million votes were illegally cast. Can one seriously deny that there was not enough flaws and discrepancies in the voting that resulted in more than the 4,109 votes that put Uhuru over the threshold? The answer is obviously NO. How many registered voters do we have in Kenya? How many of these are real people and how many are phantom voters? Is Kethi one of the registered voters? You see, we can’t answer This can be confirmed by any of these questions the simple fact that the because even IEBC doesn’t discredited body has failed know. to provide it’s official data for the elections of 2013. Is there any doubt in anyone’s mind the discredited and unreliable body has hired some brainy statisticians to try and reconcile the numbers but even they can’t get that done given the massive and careless rigging that took place during the March 4 polls? Yet, truth shall be known to all at some point and once for all, starting from the much- awaited election results data from the discredited IEBC. We know IEBC and those who benefited from how it conducted the presidential elections wish and keep telling us to “move on” but move on to where? As black slaves would say when they were told to accept slavery or move on back to Africa, we ain’t moving until the injustice visited on us is addressed and we’ll keep reminding you until kingdom come. The fact is, the discredited IEBC is exposed and will be even more fully exposed when it releases the much awaited data for 2013 elections. We have also come to know something about this body which is clearly a mirror image of the previously equally discredited ECK. Yet they chose to take our country the same path ECK did. We were saved only by the grace of God from reaching the depths of 2007. That something is not surprisingly when it comes to following the law and its mandates, IEBC basically thumbs its nose on us and asks the question popularised among the youth in social media, mta do? Well, we can do something not the least of which is demanding that heads roll at this clearly discredited and incompetent body, starting with the chairman. To be sure, there may be one or two good apples in that box but the rotten ones have made the whole box rotten. Either get rid of the rotten ones or altogether disband the whole thing. We don’t need a national electoral commission other than a perfunctory one now that we have county governments. Rather what we need in light of these repeated failures to have a credible national elections body, are 47 electoral commissions each responsible for their own county elections. At least with that kind of system, we can make it extremely difficult for the riggers to have a nationwide impact as they have had in each of the elections since elections started mattering in Kenya. To leave IEBC in its discredited self would be akin to having your worst enemy preside over your fate. IEBC has shown it is the worst enemy of democracy.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Jul 2013 04:49:16 +0000
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