Wafula Chebukati in the eye of a storm over disputed presidential poll

IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati and his deputy Juliana Cherera at the Bomas of Kenya on August 22, 2022. [Denish Ochieng, Standard] Besides William Ruto and Raila Odinga, the other person who will be following the proceedings at the Supreme Court with keen interest is IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati. Just like the president-elect and the Azimio la Umoja-One Kenya presidential candidate, Mr Chebukati has a lot of interest in the case, whose outcome will have a great impact on his career and the legacy of his six-year reign at the commission. Already smarting from the dubious distinction as the only electoral commission chief on whose watch a presidential election was nullified, the IEBC chairman may not be ready for a similar outcome as it could irreparably destroy his reputation. Unlike five years ago, there is a huge risk that an annulment this time round could throw Kenya into a constitutional logjam that may delay an election possibly into another year. Notwithstanding their past disagreements, the IEBC boss's declaration of Ruto as the winner of the presidential election and the manner he did it have widened the gulf between him and Azimio who believe he rigged the poll in their disfavour. On the other hand, having disowned the results, which they described as a product of an opaque process, it is unlikely that Ruto's team will accept the four dissenting IEBC commissioners. On August 22, Raila filed a petition at the Supreme Court, seeking to overturn Chebukati's declaration that Ruto is the legitimate winner of the poll. The Azimio flagbearer, in his petition, appears to blame the Supreme Court that the failure to order direct responsibility and culpability for the 2017 presidential election had emboldened Chebukati, "who has become a rogue public officer, who had willfully subverted the will of the Kenyan people arising from the August 9 poll". "The manner in which the 2022 presidential election was conducted graduated beyond the contumacious disregard for the Constitution, the rule of law, the national values and principles of good governance," reads the petition. But the unique circumstances the commission finds itself in makes it difficult to countenance a situation where its personnel is in the right frame of mind to conduct another election, if the Supreme Court issues such orders. Political analyst Herman Manyora said on August 22 that after the Bomas of Kenya imbroglio, Azimio is unlikely to allow the IEBC chairman to preside over any other electoral process, least of all a repeat election. "Supreme Court will have done a zero job to annul the election and give Chebukati the power to conduct a repeat one," said Mr Manyora, pointing out that the outcome of the poll has gotten into the Supreme Court largely because of Chebukati's conduct during the tallying. Asked whether the Jubilee Party is ready to have Chebukati at the commission one day longer, Secretary General Jeremiah Kioni gave an emphatic no, claiming that IEBC had, with Chebukati as a co-conspirator, rigged elections in Mt Kenya in favour of one political divide. "In presiding over the General Election, Chebukati went pedestrian," said Mr Kioni, adding that the elections in Mt Kenya were a choreographed charade that had been planned many years earlier. Similar sentiments were expressed by outgoing Kieni MP Kanini Kega, who insisted that the IEBC chairman should be in jail for bungling the just concluded poll. Outgoing Nakuru Governor Lee Kinyanjui, who lost his re-election bid to UDA's Susan Kihika, described IEBC as an institution that symbolises incompetence, whose officials were systematically compromised and facilitated the rigging of elections. "The scale in which electoral fraud was undertaken is legendary. It makes Kenya a case study of the best practices of electoral mismanagement. There is no doubt that IEBC stands for incompetence," said Mr Kinyanjui, who has promised to challenge the outcome in court. Raila Odinga filed a petition at the Supreme Court, seeking to overturn Wafula Chebukati's declaration. [File, Standard] Unlike in the past, Raila and his allies' election defeat has been more stinging on Chebukati. While in the past it was easy to target powerful persons in government for the infamy, this time round, Raila has gone for the IEBC boss's jugular, a sign of the broken relationship between the two sides. The Azimio leader's statement after the declaration of the presidential results singled out Chebukati, accusing him of occasioning a major setback to Kenya's budding democracy and warned that the country faces a grave legal and political crisis as a result of his actions. "What we saw during the declaration of presidential results was a travesty and a blatant disregard of the Constitution and the laws of Kenya by Chebukati and a minority of IEBC commissioners," he said, referring to commissioners Abdi Guliye and Bolu Molu who remained firmly with Chebukati as he made the controversial declaration. The face-off between Raila and the IEBC chairman is not new. Right from the annulment of the 2017 presidential poll, the relationship between the two sides has been icy. Until December 2020, ODM was still pushing for his removal as it considered him harmful to its interests in capturing State power. Just how the matter died has never been clear. But out of the desire to see through the BBI project, of which the commission was an integral actor, ODM was prevailed upon to go easy on Chebukati out of an understanding of a possible rapprochement, which now appears never happened. If the IEBC chairman's six-year reign at the commission was characterised by confusion at best, and chaos at worst, that is what he sought to project out, in the hope that would help confuse the growing legions of his critics who were unhappy with his stewardship. Soon after taking over at the commission in January 2017, he fell out with then-CEO Ezra Chiloba. While the public unwittingly sided with him, the eventual resignation of Rosslyn Akombe, a commissioner, just brought to the fore his wriggly managerial skills. Chebukati, through a series of letters leaked to the media, succeeded in passing the blame for the 2017 election infamy to Chiloba, while playing victim and shielding himself from blame. If he got away with it at that time, it is because the former commission CEO was a victim of public slant; he was considered the face of the old order that was defined by the Issack Hassan's commission. Hassan and his team were hounded out of office through Raila's engineered mass protests in 2016 and while Chiloba remained, the public never appeared to have accepted him. The exit of Akombe on the eve of the 2017 repeat presidential election and the subsequent resignation of three other commissioners in 2018 further exposed Chebukati's managerial style and his grip at the commission. In their statement of resignation, the three - Connie Maina, then vice chair, Margret Mwachanya and Paul Kurgat - said under the IEBC chairman's leadership, the commission's boardroom has become a venue for peddling misinformation, grounds for brewing mistrust, and a space for scrambling for and chasing individual glory and credit. The latest decision by the four commissioners to rebel and reject his decision to declare Ruto the winner of the just concluded election fits the puzzle that has defined Chebukati's reign at IEBC.

Wafula Chebukati in the eye of a storm over disputed presidential poll

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