The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) is an independent institution.
Constitutionally, the electoral agency should not receive direction from anyone on how to do its job.
So the opinions by political stakeholders are resulting from IEBC not possibly offering adequate and meaningful information to the interested parties.
It should be very clear that IEBC must offer meaningful, adequate and timely information to all stakeholders.
The agency should also call politicians to order, particularly those in Parliament or those who have parties with representation in Parliament.
The big problem with Kenya’s elections is when IEBC is not adequately funded, or the money is released late in the day; right now the commission is operating on deficit months to the general election.
Where does IEBC get this money? So that we have last-minute arrangements of some government-to-government or the National Treasury taking charge to fast-track it? That is where they lose it.
The IEBC should be funded timely and fully so as to be able to do their logistics properly.
This should go hand in hand with meaningful and timely information to all stakeholders.
In the last elections, we had some challenges of ballot papers coming with mistakes. In 2017, there was a committee of ICT where political parties were seconding their experts to oversee the IEBC processes on technology.
The question is whether we need some further electoral reforms around election technology so that you don’t have problems around technology and ballot papers.
Why would it not have ballot paper specimens properly looked at so that you do not get the photo of the Governor of Mombasa appearing on the ballot of the Governor of Kakamega?
The IEBC can sort out all these by ensuring that they are adequately, sufficiently and meaningfully offering information to ensure the processes are above board, getting funding in good time - which is the function of Parliament and the Executive.
We also need to ask ourselves if we need some more guidance through election reforms on the issue of election technology and ballot papers processing so that we avoid incidences where ballot papers have errors.
Center for Multiparty Democracy (
CMD) Executive Directorspoke to the Star
