Not all believe IEBC can be an honest broker

Your average football fan cannot name more than five referees in the world game. However, most remember all three names of the man who officiated the 2009 UEFA Champions league semi-final between English Club Chelsea and Spanish giants Barcelona. Tom Henning Ovrebo.

Barcelona at the time was by many accounts in some of the best form in that club’s stellar history. They had all the big name stars and played the beautiful game beautifully while Chelsea always had a different philosophical approach to winning. Still those of us who favour Chelsea always believed if the team had a good day, played like their lives depended on it and above all got a fair referee in charge of the game, they could beat Barcelona easily.

That brings me to why Mr Ovrebo is so famous. In that semi-final Chelsea had a good day and played like their lives depended upon it but still lost. Barcelona, with all their superstars, did not per se need any help winning but Mr Ovrebo inexplicably chose to help them anyway, waving away no less than four clear penalties he should have awarded Chelsea. The referee in any sport can be the difference between winning and losing. It is why impartiality and fairness are the greatest attributes for the all important officials. No one would waste time competing in a match where the officials so clearly lack the two. Sports and competitive politics are no different in this regard.

Just like Chelsea and Barcelona, we have a clear ideological divide between the two main protagonists in our politics. Jubilee, despite their many failings and lack of any ideological anchor, like to think of themselves as the political equivalent of Barcelona. They believe they cannot lose.

They admittedly have a lot of superstars on their team the biggest being, of course, money. What money allows you to do is to run a well-oiled razzle-dazzle type of campaign. It cannot, however, buy you ideological content, which is why I believe if the opposition CORD got its act together, played for everything in 2017 and had a fair referee this time round they would win easily. This brings me to our own Mr Ovrebo, the IEBC, and to the recent calls by the opposition to boycott the 2017 election if the body is not reformed. The IEBC suffers a serious but self-inflicted crisis of public confidence in its ability to be a fair referee in future elections. You need only look at the so-called “Strategic Plan” launched recently for evidence that IEBC has no intention of ever delivering a free and fair election.

The plan draws from and is built upon an alleged “SWOT” (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities Threats) analysis. Any honest SWOT analysis by a right-thinking Kenyan would list as the foremost Weakness and Threat, the avaricious greed and thirst for public resources that permeates through the organisation as evidenced by corruption allegations and charges against a slew of its high ranking officials. Yet according to IEBC, inadequate office space is what is considered a key weakness/threat to the delivery of a fair election. It is clear that this strategic plan was arrived at without consultation with key stakeholders because we would have helped outline the real weaknesses and threats which are obvious to all others but seem unclear to the IEBC. As the Swahili say, ‘Mganga hajigangi’. There is no way IEBC could be expected to conduct an honest self appraisal.

Just like Mr Ovrebo could not plausibly officiate another Chelsea-Barcelona match after bungling the first one, neither can IEBC in its current form purport to be an impartial umpire in yet another contest between CORD and Jubilee. Should they insist on officiating, the opposition would be justified in urging its supporters to abstain from legitimising, through participation, an inherently illegitimate process.