IEBC not well appraised of huge task ahead of 2017

On Monday, CORD MPs demanded suspension of the mass voter registration set for next month citing the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission’s (IEBC) lack of adequate registration materials. Having submitted a budget for Sh2 billion for the exercise, the government deemed it fit to only provide Sh500 million, a quarter of what had been requested. This is a clear act of deliberate sabotage.

Surely, unless the IEBC had given a grossly bloated budget, how could a quarter of the money it had requested be adequate to carry out the registration? Strangely, the commission itself has not indicated it is unable to register voters.

The commission plans to register voters for a month between February 15th and March 15th at the 24,618 centres. The plan is to send two clerks and one biometric voter registration (BVR) kit to each ward in the country. The clerks will then move to various polling centres registering voters. This is clearly a recipe for disaster.

Understandably, Opposition MPs think that this theory to have a clerk going round with a registration kit is a trick to rig the election and want registration to take place at every polling station. It is not inconceivable that people will go to one registration centre only to be told that the clerk is at another one. This sort of cat and mouse game can only be prevented by ensuring that every registration centre has a kit. The MPs also have legitimate fears that more equipment will be sent to areas where Jubilee enjoys support. This is already a fact in the last election which saw skewed distribution of equipment.

Instead of demanding for proper resources to carry out a credible exercise, the IEBC is going for a compromised process. It is telling that the CEO, instead of complaining about inadequate resources, is instead claiming that all was well. “It is possible to have everybody who did not register or who intends to register now to do it. If we have political goodwill and every politician mobilises their supporters then we will get the numbers targeted despite the shortage of resources,” he said.

Mr Ezra Chiloba says the commission is determined to use the existing facilities to conduct the registration. If this is true, then the man should resign! How is it that the IEBC is able to run on a mere quarter of the budget it had initially requested for, all the while claiming that things are optimal?

Unless we are about to witness a miracle on the scale of the multiplication of the fish and loaves, there must be something afoot. The resources at hand are simply insufficient to carry out a credible exercise.

Yet, even as the CEO claims the commission will deliver, he at the same time seeks to hedge his position to enable him cover when the inevitable failure happens.

He says he cannot employ more than two registration assistants per ward with between two to three machines at work. If this is not a case of having your cake and eating it, I don’t know what is.

The fact of the matter is that we have a far from credible elections body and unfortunately the commission is unwilling to be candid even with itself, let alone us. A so-called SWOT analysis in its 2015-2020 Strategic Plan inexplicably fails to identify the appetite for Chicken within its ranks as a weakness and threat to its ability to deliver a credible election. It’s Election Operations Plan for 2017 counts “deployment of Electoral Technology” in 2013 as a success. Heaven knows why.

Unless the commission cleans its house and starts acting in a manner that is seen to be impartial to all, the negative sentiment against it in large segments of the population will keep festering. As they say, once bitten twice shy.