Raila vows not to participate in repeat election unless demands are adequately addressed

National Super Alliance presidential flag bearer Raila Odinga addresses a press conference at the Okoa Kenya office in Lavington, Nairobi, after meeting leaders from Kisii Community. [Edward Kiplimo, Standard]

The electoral agency cited binding legal contracts and the limited time to the October 26 elections among the hurdles to meeting the Opposition's key demands.

Apart from key timelines and processes already underway, including measures to incorporate recommendations by the Supreme Court in preparations for the poll, electoral commissioners explained their difficulties with some of the demands during Tuesday's meeting with NASA leaders.

On the seven demands that NASA has described as irreducible minimum, the electoral commission cited binding legal contracts and risk of compromising ongoing operational programmes like training of poll officials as some of the difficulties they faced.

That was especially the case with the twin demands to do away with Dubai-based firm Al Ghurair for the printing of ballot papers and French technology company OT-Morpho for the supply of electronic elections system.

For Al Ghurair, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission explained that aside from a two-year contract, its attempt to have UNDP get an alternative firm had been rejected by political parties.

On OT-Morpho, IEBC reportedly said it had already signed a Sh2.4 billion deal to reconfigure the KIEMS.

But IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati assured the contract with the firm would be made public for full disclosure of the functions that would be deployed.

With elections three weeks away, IEBC explained that appointing new returning officers for the 290 constituencies would disrupt preparations as the gazetted officials were already undergoing training.

Of the issues raised by NASA, it was apparent that most of them could not be met in total as demanded.

"Nothing is agreed until it is totally agreed. There is no agreement between us and IEBC. We presented a concise document detailing what went wrong with the elections. There is still a big gap (between us and IEBC). We have told them to close that gap," Opposition leader Raila Odinga insisted yesterday after meeting with members of the Abagusii community.

It emerged a four-member committee that met on Tuesday evening did not make much headway because the Opposition representatives insisted the IEBC team should prepare a detailed write-up responding to their key demands.

NASA was represented by Senator James Orengo and NASA secretariat chief executive Norman Magaya. Commissioners Roselyn Akombe and Paul Kurgat represented the commission.

Orengo said unless their demands are met, they will not take part in the October 26 election.

Four-member team

The setting up of the four-member committee was agreed on during the Tuesday meeting between the electoral commissioners and NASA co-principals Raila Odinga, Kalonzo Musyoka, Musalia Mudavadi and Moses Wetang'ula.

But one area the electoral commission made immediate concession was on features of Form 34B, which aggregates results from the polling stations.

The concern by NASA was that IEBC was preparing Form 34Bs that were only standardised on the cover page with the rest being a spreadsheet sheet.

"We agreed with NASA to make necessary adjustments to Form 34B," said Chebukati.

Another issue that wasn't disputed was granting media houses access to cover all results announcements at the respective constituencies and show live feed of the outcome.

On Wednesday, Raila vowed not to participate unless the ‘irreducible minimum’ is adequately addressed by the electoral agency.

KIEMS Kits

NASA, in its list of ‘irreducible minimum’, had demanded that the commission should proactively announce exact number of persons who shall have voted at 5pm based on tabulations from KIEMS kits before the counting starts.

The Opposition also demanded that the elections results should be announced at the constituency level and that only scanned images should be sent through the KIEMS kits or results transmitted by presiding officers and returning officers may be tabulated.

Story by Rawlings Otieno, Protus Onyango and Geoffrey Mosoku