IEBC owes it to Kenya to deliver credible vote

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has finally set the ball rolling with the unveiling of the roadmap to the next year's General Election. No doubt, next year's will be Kenya's most expensive election.

The success of the election will be guaranteed by how the various institutions work together: Parliament and the National Treasury ought to ensure that requisite funds are not only available, but are disbursed in good time; the political parties ought to adhere to the time table given and most importantly, political leaders campaign peacefully and exhort their voters to remain peaceful. On the other hand, IEBC must hand down punitive sanctions to those who break the electoral code.

The heaviest burden is on IEBC who must go full throttle to clean up its sullied image. Since 2013, the Opposition coalition has sought to discredit it as a compromised institution incapable of competently managing the 2017 vote. It behoves the IEBC to convince those who are skeptical among the electorate that it is impartial and capable of conducting a clean election. It will be a plus for IEBC if the electronic equipment and materials necessary for the success of the elections are sourced from recognised and established suppliers through competitive bidding. IEBC had earlier indicated that it needed to buy 40,000 new Electronic Voter Identification Devices after declaring the 2013 lot, that cost Sh1.4 billion, obsolete and unsuitable for use next year.

The electronic tallying system must especially be dependable to preclude cries of foul play. In the 2013 election, the system failed, forcing the electoral officials to manually tally the results. This gave the Opposition reason to contest the results of the presidential elections at the Supreme Court. While it is not wrong to contest election results, IEBC will save the country anxious moments that come with a contest that ends up in a courtroom.

It can achieve that by striving to regain the confidence and trust it lost. That means, logistics must be given top priority. The voter registration scheduled to kick off today gives IEBC the chance to prove it has learnt from past mistakes and how it plans to avoid them.

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