By PETER OPIYO
Electoral team is fighting to maintain its credibility and confidence of Kenyans in the final outcome after it surprisingly abandoned plans for electronic voting in favour of vulnerable and risky manual process.
Spelling out measures it would enforce to ensure ‘dead’ voters, estimated at 2,000,000 in the bungled 2007 election, do not ‘vote’ in next year’s election, the team also defended the decision to go manual.
Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission Chairman Isaack Hassan said even with the manual registration of voters, which IEBC had now been forced to settle on, his team would still execute a fair process and deliver a credible result.
His assurance, however, did not seem to convince a joint sitting of two parliamentary committees picked to probe the tender for electronic voting platform withdrawn following claims of bribery and inferior standards.
Hassan and his team of eight commissioners, as well as IEBC’s chief executive JSO Oswago, appeared before the committees a day after National Assembly Speaker Kenneth Marende ordered investigations into the Sh3.9 billion Biometric Voter Register (BVR) Tender.
IEBC on Wednesday announced, a day after Appeal Court ruled in favour of its March 4, 2013, election date, it had discarded plans for BVR, despite the fact Kenyans had pinned the hope that there would not be a repeat of the 2007 electoral malpractices because of its inbuilt security features.
Hassan enumerated measures IEBC would employ to weed out any loopholes that may be used to interfere with the data collection, to the level that would have been guaranteed by an electronic process.
Even though the electoral body had promised Kenyans they would next year vote on an electronic platform, where results are streamed on real time from the polling centres and automatically tallied at the selected centres across the country, Hassan conceded the setback was real.
“We gave a promise that we were going to fully automate the electoral process, but now we are disappointed. This is a setback to our promise, but nothing is lost because we have conducted voter registration before,” said Hassan.
The commission said it would ensure it has a clean voter register. It said it would liaise with relevant registration agencies to scrutinise the register ahead of elections.
“To enhance the integrity of the register, we will subject the register to a check with the National Registration Bureau, Department of Immigration for passports and Registrar of Births and Deaths, and Integrated Population Registration System,” said Hassan.
Hassan also downplayed the reported tensions in the commission between himself on the one hand and Oswago, under whom IEBC is in the process of employing two deputies, on the other.
However, Justice Minister Eugene Wamalwa, though in agreement with the decision to cancel BVR tender, suggested IEBC could hire BVR kits from Ghana, which is currently using the system, and is considered a superior nation in Africa in the conduct of elections.
Vested interests
Hassan explained the BVR tender turned ‘murky’ following seepage of “vested interests” his team, which he feared could taint the image of the electoral body and undermine its credibility.
“Whichever bidder you pick there will be an issue. Vendors have been viciously fighting among themselves through the media over the process,” said the chairman.
Other than cleaning the voter register, Oswago said the commission would employ ‘randomisation’ where electoral officers are posted to areas they are not familiar with, at short notice to avoid collusion during voting. He said political parties would be accorded opportunity to audit voter register to ensure its integrity.
IEBC cancelled the tender after a due diligence team reported none of the two lowest bidders had complied with the requirements. The process was also politicised, especially with unverified claims that the company that was in the final process of being re-appraised before being given the tender was linked to an influential Party of National Unity activist.
On Thursday Kimilili MP Eseli Simiyu pleaded with IEBC to rescind its decision on BVR saying manual voter registration relies on integrity of individuals and cannot be trusted.
Kasarani MP Elizabeth Ongoro supported him. “I beg the commission to re-look at this issue and fast track the procurement to get us BVR ... let us not allow anybody to influence results,” pleaded the MP.
IEBC explained it would now use Optical Mark Reader (OMR) system for voter registration, which is a special scanning device, which can read markings on a document and electronically store the data.
Gachoka MP Mutava Musyimi and Nominated MP Amina Abdalla sought the truth about perception there was bad between Hassan and Oswago, but the two blamed the media for the view.
Oswago argued this was perception that had been created and the less it was talked about the better for the commission.
Attorney General Githu Muigai said he was expecting to receive Elections Regulations from IEBC for debate and adoption in Parliament.
Githunguri MP, Njoroge Baiya, who co-chaired the session with Nominated MP, Millie Odhiambo, reminded the commission of Johann Kriegler’s recommendation about the messy voter register in 2007 and wondered whether the IEBC was ready to address the possible consequences.
Hassan assured the MPs his team was alive to the fact and told the MPs the OMR system that IEBC will use had been tested in other countries. He said it was also used in the 2010 referendum, and in the 12 by-elections since 2008.
According to its calendar, voter registration begin next month, and compilation of register would be conducted in November, and inspection in January.
