Electoral commission and Jubilee are two sides of the same coin

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In a rejoinder to an article I had written on the IEBC in this paper a few weeks ago, Issack Hassan, the chairman of the IEBC, contended in the pages of this paper on May 25 that I had raised issues that were unwarranted. Having published what he called “results” of the March 2013 elections more than a year later, Mr Hassan proudly announced that this was an earth shaking achievement which has not been done elsewhere. Rather than castigate him, Kenyans should actually be grateful that they now have what it takes to manage elections: verifiable results. Hassan forgets that India, with more than 700 million voters, takes less than a month to count and announce results; and no petitions follow unlike our experience with Hassan managed elections.

I still beg to differ with Mr Hassan. Apart from having given us the same assurance before the elections that results would be available as soon as voting ended and not living up to his word, he should be honest enough that the IEBC spent more than a year trying to rationalise glaring contradictions in their figures. This has been amply proved by the more than 180 petitions in the courts, most of which have blamed the IEBC for mismanagement, inefficiency, corruption, malfeasance and outright deception. And that is why I long ago concluded that, under Issack Hassan, the IEBC has become a criminal organisation not only in being involved in shady procurement deals but also in criminally managing elections.

As far as the ill-fated BVR kits are concerned I am still at a loss why Hassan is so eager to dispose of them to the government to be used for the Digital Registration exercise. In a democratic political system where elections can be held at any time depending on what happens to the fortunes of the ruling party or coalition, the IEBC must always be more than prepared with its tools of trade to run such elections. Having failed to use freshly minted BVRs in the last elections, Hassan now wants to lend his tools of trade to the government hoping to recycle them back to the IEBC as and when needed. An absurd proposal, full of uncertainties, loss of valuable data and potentiality for third parties to “technically monitor” the work of IEBC by introducing eavesdropping gadgets into the BVRs.

A letter written to Ndugu Hassan on this matter from a high ranking government official proudly announces: “It is suggested that the IEBC enters into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Information, Communication and Technology whereby the IEBC issues the Ministry with 16,200 BVR kits and their accessories, 5,000 portable generators and their accessories, and provides technical assistance and logistical support where necessary.”

Ndugu Hassan quoted retired Judge Johann Kriegler very appropriately when he wrote that “you cannot run an honest election in a dishonest political environment.” It is precisely because of this that we ourselves are very wary with the dalliance between Hassan and one side of the political process, especially when this involves “inside trading” with sensitive IEBC equipment. The word “independent” in the Commission’s name should mean something to the chairman, and should protect it from any suspicion of partisanship, including “lending” BVR kits to the government in an initiative where the government need not get an easy but suspicious ride on the back of the IEBC.

On the same page that Hassan took me to task, an article appeared by Senator Billow Kerrow announcing to the whole world that CORD was “showing signs of ineffectual leadership”, thereby essentially outsourcing a purely Jubilee malaise to the opposition side, a game men like Kerrow have perfected. Going by all standards, and by their own admonition of the President and Deputy President at State House this week, Jubilee legislators only know too well that leadership is a quality difficult to identify among their ranks, from the National Assembly to the apex of state power.

We need not belabour the rule by deception that is now a trademark of Jubilee leaders. One day they give the assurance that the Anglo Leasing debts will not be paid without parliamentary approval. The Jubilee MPs go on a rampage shouting “ can’t pay won’t pay.” The next day the President surreptitiously orders the payment to be made in the middle of the night. The rampaging MPs then go quiet, including the self-righteous Billow Kerrow. We in CORD have, at no time, changed our stand either before or after the midnight onslaught on the conscience of Kenyans on the Anglo Leasing issue  by Jubilee leadership.

I am therefore not surprised that Billow Kerrow has not bothered to read the ODM’s evaluation of Jubilee’s performance during their first year in power entitled “The Lies Jubilee Tells.” Were he to do so, he would employ his brains much more productively seeking solutions to the messes in the energy sector, the destructive emergence of Jubilee-driven monopoly in the processing and marketing of dairy products which is likely to depress farm gate milk prices, the rampant primitive accumulation invading all government tenders and the rise of a kleptocratic plutocracy which is out to roll back democratisation, Constitutionalism and the rule of law in our nation.

Billow Kerrow knows that Senators Chris Obure, Agnes Nzani and myself have Bills that are currently pending before the Senate. His ignorance of these Bills is not our fault: it is simply yet another piece of evidence of Jubilee leaders’ tendency to engage in political hubris and self-glorification, both signs of subterranean confidence deficit.

Continuously falling back to the rigged elections of March 2013 as a fact that Kenyans should do well to forget and “move on” calls for a Freudian analysis of the guilty conscience that keeps on haunting the Jubilee supremacists. CORD is currently focusing on how to get the country out of the mess Jubilee has put us into. That, of course, includes dealing with the criminal IEBC as presently constituted. In doing this we do not expect the supremacists to love us; if they did I would begin suspecting the value of our work and its relevance to the needs of Kenyans. I therefore expect even more vitriol from the likes of Kerrow. Once more I will be more than ready to respond.

The writer is Kisumu County Senator