The failure of the Okoa Kenya campaign on a technicality should worry all reasonable Kenyans. The fact that the country’s second political coalition could not muster one million signatures from registered voters can mean only two things: (i) that the Independent, Electoral and Boundaries Coalition (IEBC) has a vendetta against CORD and has intentionally denied the Okoa Kenya campaign forward progress; or (ii) that CORD actually did not meet the constitutional signature threshold.
Both scenarios are unthinkable ahead of next year’s elections.
The IEBC already has a trust deficit with a significant portion of Kenyans. The last thing it needs is more evidence that it is playing favourites and willing to do anything under the sun to handicap CORD.
If Kenya were a sane country run by a sane political class (on both sides) we could have disbanded and reconstituted the IEBC when the “Chickengate” scandal broke.
Instead we are lumbering into an election year with an electoral management body whose top officials have been implicated in a corruption scandal that materially affected results of the last election.
Remember the British co-conspirators of these IEBC officials were found guilty of corruption by a court of law. This is reasonable grounds to assume their Kenyan accomplices are just as guilty or at the very least that these officials are unfit to hold public office. They should go home.
Let us not kid around. It is terribly hard to compartmentalise the lack of integrity. One of the many maladies that ail us, as a nation, is our collective delusion that we can compartmentalise spheres of corruption and utter incompetence in the public service. That we can have corrupt ministries and agencies that are mere cash cows; but have others that are competent and able to deliver. This is a fat lie. Soon corruption and incompetence permeates everything. It is this same case of cognitive dissonance that informs our dealings with the IEBC.
Our failure to see the rot in the IEBC for what it is risks sinking us all next year. And the failure of the Okoa Kenya campaign – whether legitimately or not – will only add fuel to the fire that is the total lack of confidence in the IEBC.
The second possibility is that CORD actually failed to get at least one million signatures from registered voters across the country. Before submission, CORD announced that it had collected 1.4 million signatures. This seemed more than enough. But as it turns out CORD may have fallen short of the one million registered voters required to keep the referendum push going. It is hard to believe that a coalition of CORD’s stature could fail to get a million signatures. Which is why if this is true, we all ought to be worried ahead of next year.
One of the biggest causes of electoral violence is the mismatch between expectations and reality among voters. If you go into an election assured of victory, then you lose embarrassingly, there is always temptation to blame the loss on foul play. If, and this is a big if, CORD is incompetent enough to miss the one million signature mark, then next year will be a disaster for us.
It means the coalition will most likely also run a shoddy campaign then subject us all to collective pain over yet another stolen election – with the attendant risk of violence. For the sake of the country’s political stability, CORD must be a competent organisation that can run a competent campaign.
Anything short of that, and in light of the lack of trust in the IEBC, is a recipe for disaster.
