Raila Odinga defies IEBC as Uhuru Kenyatta complies with campaign financing rule

Opposition leader Raila Odinga’s ODM party Friday said it will not engage the IEBC until new commissioners assume office and advised its members to ignore “this ill-advised deadline”. (Photo: Jenipher Wachie/Standard)

The Opposition is once again on a warpath with the electoral commission over poll regulations. CORD and Amani National Congress have protested against the campaign financing rules, whose extended deadline lapsed last night.

Hundreds of aspirants Friday jammed the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) offices to provide details of their campaign fund accounts, including names of chairman, secretary and treasurer of the candidates’ campaign committee who will be account signatories.

Opposition leader Raila Odinga’s ODM party Friday said it will not engage the IEBC until new commissioners assume office and advised its members to ignore “this ill-advised deadline”. Wiper was expected to write a protest letter to IEBC but admitted that some of its members had filled the forms due to panic albeit.

They argued that political parties had not picked their candidates for the polls, making it unrealistic for the IEBC to give a deadline for them to form campaign committees and open bank accounts. The IEBC wants to monitor how much the candidates will use and the donations they will receive because all the monies will have to be deposited in those accounts.

Another issue being raised is that the Election Campaign Financing (ECF) Act, 2013 is yet to be regularised by the National Assembly and gazetted. IEBC Friday tweeted: “Concerns have been raised regarding compliance with the ECF law. Those concerns can only be addressed by other institutions.” The commission through its Communication Manager Andrew Limo accused the political class of misleading the public over enactment of the law.

He cited Act No 42 of 2013 (ECF) whose commencement date on a document uploaded in the Kenya Law website is January 10, 2014. The document further shows that the law was assented on December 24, 2013. On Thursday, President Uhuru Kenyatta complied - just hours before the initial deadline was extended due to large numbers of those seeking to comply with the law.

While submitting President Kenyatta’s documents, head of Jubilee Secretariat Raphael Tuju also raised concerns over flaws in the law in implementing the requirement. “We raised concerns to the IEBC on difficulties we as a party are experiencing in complying with this part of the law because the IEBC had not gazetted the regulations and guidelines and neither had Parliament legislated such regulations as required by the law,” said Tuju.

But Jubilee said it had since advised its aspirants to comply with the requirement after IEBC provided forms detailing instructions on how to comply.

Agitated representatives

Political Parties Liaison Committee had on Wednesday warned against implementation of the regulations and demanded that they be suspended until Parliament regularises the provisions.

The agitated representatives of political parties warned the electoral agency not to bungle the next election by effecting unrealistic provisions of the law. IEBC developed the draft regulations in consultation with the Committee on Delegated Legislation and submitted them to the National Assembly for approval but they are yet to be enacted.