IEBC needs huge doze of citizen power and institutional reforms

Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Chairperson Erastus Edung Ethekon, together with IEBC Commissioners, during a media briefing at PrideInn Paradise - Shanzu in Mombasa County on July 19, 2025. [File, Standard]

I see society’s pulse in its structures—how they uplift or oppress, unite or divide. The electoral boundary system, stewarded by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), is a structure teetering on collapse.

On September 5, 2035,  the Supreme Court delivered a monumental Advisory Opinion striking out IEBC’s application dated July 4, 2024 seeking a determination on the missed boundaries review deadline. The Supreme Court threw the ball back to the IEBC, in essence saying to them, use your collective wisdom or sink in your folly. Add to this the festering wound of Kieni’s 2012 backlash, and the diagnosis is clear: the current framework is unsustainable.