How infighting within IEBC led to current standoff

Political, vendor and rent-seeking interests in the run-up to the last general election brought the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to its current state – almost on its knees.

In-depth interviews with commission insiders – current and past – and experts in elections attest to a largely poisoned chalice from which millions of voters were forced to drink on March 4, 2013.

The interviews paint a picture of a largely cantankerous commission; in-fighting among interest groups, political and business infiltration, weak management and generally a commission which failed the country at its hour of need.
Some even went as far as to suggest that, unless the commissioners have reformed, they cannot possibly manage the next general election.
"Given the amount of monies involved in the tenders of pre-2013, political, vendor and rent-seeking interests were roped in and the commission was held hostage. Granted, there was a lot of commitment to get it right but we lost out to these interests," an ex-top IEBC official confessed.

According to the official, the interests found face among various top officials who frustrated and counter-frustrated each other to the point that the only resource available – time – was lost, with serious consequences.
Tenders stretched out way past their time frames, disputes dragged on, cancellations made, decisions dragged, contrived stalemates staged, procedures brazenly flouted and processes deliberately sabotaged.
"It is a miracle that the commission was able to undertake the elections given the enormous pressure that was brought to bear by all these interests. The kind of organisational turbulence I witnessed shocked me," the ex-officer told The Standard on Sunday.

A current member of the commission who served through the 2013 period attests to the turbulence at play in the run up to the polls. His understanding of it is that the situation was politically contrived to achieve the same results.
According to the officer, the government to government BVR tender approach which saved the situation was by and large "a high class nonsense" which further complicated matters.

"The BVR drama spilled over to EVID which was supposed to ensure integrity of the process through unique identifier technology. It depended largely on successful deployment of BVR. All the companies which had bid for BVR moved in to EVID for another battle," the officer said.

Everything else other than BVR and EVID procurement was deeply contested within the commission as political interests had built-up in the process: From decisions on polling stations and their locations, compilation of the voter register to transfers of officers.

So contrived were issues around the tendering processes that appeals were accepted outside statutory agreed deadlines and companies which won were offered little support by sections of the commission that lost.
"All these factors invariably affected the management and outcome of the election. Essentially, you could say it is not the technology that failed the people of Kenya. It is the people who failed the technology," another officer said.

To complicate matters, no meaningful technical audit has ever been done to ascertain why technology, especially the vote transmission system, failed. According to the officials, it is possible that it was deliberately jammed to interfere with the results.

The people interviewed said the secretariat suffered under the commissioners since they were expected to execute functions under a difficult set of circumstances.

“Basically, it’s a lot that did not rise to the occasion in terms of broad national interests. I do not think they have changed. Where organisational probity was required they failed the country. They were completely lost at sea and were clueless as to what was required of them,” the officer said.

According to Elections Observation Group (Elog) national coordinator Mule Musau (pictured), the IEBC as structured at the time and even now may be designed to fail. He points to the large number of commissioners (nine), large mandate and lack of clearly defined delineation of the commission and the secretariat.

Musau says the function of delimitation of boundaries and the function of dispute resolution ought to be taken away from the commission. The commissioners also ought to be reduced to around three and accountability mechanisms enforced to hold individuals to account.

“If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would tell you the current commission is designed to fail in terms of structure and composition. I am not surprised that they failed so badly in the 2013 election.

"When you have nine commissioners and a full-fledged secretariat operating at the same time and a highly polarised political environment in a context such as ours, it’s essentially chaos,” Musau says.

Both Musau and the ex-IEBC officials we talked to agree that the country needs to pull all strings to obtain an efficient and properly functioning electoral management body. They all agree that credibility is at the heart of any electoral management body and is hard to restore when lost.

“Credibility is a central issue in any election. Generally, elections are very sensitive processes and it is important that all players involved are credible, including political parties.

Our elections tend to be hotly contested. It can’t get any worse now that people know the importance of some of the new offices like MCA and Governor positions,” Musau adds.