There’s always a trooping of ideas and calls for the electoral body to be disbanded as a general election approaches—just as is happening with the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC). The reasons are usually incompetence and partisanship. We then pay commissioners hefty send-home packages and spend a fortune to recruit new ones. And the circus continues.
When, in 2009, the now-defunct Interim Independent Electoral Commission (IIEC) and Interim Independent Boundary Review Commission (IIBRC) were established to replace the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK), no staff or board member was to be retained. The desire for “sweeping electoral reforms” was overwhelming. The ECK, chaired by Samuel Kivuitu, was blamed for the 2007/8 post-election violence.
But nobody cared to understand what really went wrong, let alone how to fix it. We did not want to identify and punish culprits of electoral offences. We did not evaluate the case and find solutions to it. We did not look for “disconfirming evidence and constructive debate” that Margaret Heffernan, the author of Dare to Disagree, advocates. We pursued the settling effect of the promise of change. Hence, we failed to address the problem.
Take the recent incident of erroneous data that has brought huge condemnation to the IEBC and chairman Wafula Chebukati. Three years after the 2017 polls, they posted an analysis of the results it announced.
The move may have been driven by good intention — transparency and compliance with Article 35 of the Constitution, which guarantees access to information. The errors were quickly corrected and explained, but the value of the exercise was lost because nobody went back to read the updated document. All we remember is the errors.
The disaggregated data from election results gives more information than just listing winners and losers. That is why it was called an election data report. It highlights voting trends, gender, youth and so on. For example, it says only six per cent of the 3,428 youths aged 18-34 who vied for positions were women. This is useful information for academics studying elections, voter educators and even those advocating greater participation and inclusivity in elections.
The IEBC was probably trying to assert itself as the primary custodian of comprehensive election information. It is not uncommon to see organisations engaged in civic education providing analysed data to the public.
The train of criticism and scepticism of IEBC must contextualise and appreciate the circumstances it operates in—which can be frustrating, to say the least. Many will remember that, not so long ago, the IEBC complained that it lacked both the money and census data to undertake boundary delimitation. The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics would later provide the data, and the National Treasury allocated it a Sh500 million budget.
But when Covid-19 struck, the government froze expenditure and took back most of the funds, leaving the IEBC with only Sh156 million for preliminaries.
But even if it worked hard, the IEBC would not accomplish the electoral review in time for the outcome to be used in the next elections, in 2022. After the report is published, there will be a month for filing of disputes and then three months for the courts to hear and determine the cases. Some cases could end up in lengthy appeals. These are the realities.
Even if we had a new team at the IEBC, the circumstances would remain the same.
There’s also an awkward predicament that the IEBC and a number of other independent commissions face: When demanding facilitation from the government, they can’t afford to be seen as antagonising it since it is formed by a party and is, therefore, its client.
It was, therefore, courageous of Chief Justice David Maraga to complain that the Judiciary had been starved of funds. The other arms of government may feel that an unhappy court would not arbitrate impartially should a case involving them come up before it.
Two things need to happen now. First, the gap the four commissioners who resigned left should be filled immediately as the term of the chairman and the two remaining commissioners ends in 2023. This will not only boost the numbers and energy in the IEBC, but also achieve two other goals: retention of institutional memory and staggering of commissioners’ recruitment.
Secondly, the commission should tell us its strategy for the next polls and beyond for us to give our feedback.
Mr Ngeno, a lecturer on Public Administration at Kenya Highlands University, Kericho, is a former official of the Electoral Commission of Kenya. [email protected]
