IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati faces the toughest test of his life as a divided Kenya heads to the repeat election with inadequate and unreliable poll officials in the NASA strongholds.
Details of his make-or-break moment emerged as Chebukati appeared to have backed off from his resignation threat and insinuation that the credibility of the October 26 vote cannot be guaranteed.
By yesterday, it was still unclear how the IEBC would pull off the election on NASA turfs, especially in Luo Nyanza, after most the commission’s temporary staff abandoned the exercise.
The first option the IEBC top brass is mulling over is the postponement of Thursday’s repeat presidential vote in the opposition bastions. This is mainly due to hostility and the logistical nightmare the commission faces.
The move follows days of sustained attacks on IEBC officials at training centres in parts of Siaya, Kisumu, Vihiga, Homa Bay and Migori counties.
In opposition chief Raila Odinga’s Bondo backyard, a botched training for poll officials was moved to the Bondo AP Camp on Saturday and Sunday, lifting the lid on the dire security crisis.
The four-day trainings across the country were slashed to two in Nyanza, with hundreds of poll officials giving the exercise a wide berth. The critical decision on whether to postpone the repeat polls in some parts of the country will be made by the divided six-member IEBC plenary today.
Last week, Chebukati publicly tore into four of the commissioners as partisan and said they veto most of his proposals.
Section 55 of the Election Act gives the IEBC powers to postpone elections if the environment is not conducive for free and fair elections. However, the presidential results can be invalidated if the polls are not held in each of the country’s 290 constituencies.
Article 138 ( 2 ) of the Constitution, on the conduct of the procedure of a presidential election, states, “if two or more candidates are nominated, an election shall be held in each constituency.”
This means that even if the vote is postponed, it must be held within seven days before the final presidential results are declared.However, NASA leaders who spoke to the Star said the October 26 vote is a charade whether it is postponed in some parts of the country or not. “Whatever the IEBC and Jubilee will be purporting to conduct on Thursday cannot be an election under the Kenyan Constitution.
So, apart from perpetuating the Jubilee policy of profiling the Luo Nation, the so-called postponement will serve no purpose,” said ODM Secretary for Political Affairs Opiyo Wandayi.
NASA Chief Executive Officer Norman Magaya said that the coalition’s leadership will give its comprehensive position on Wednesday.“This country does not belong to Uhuru and his cronies alone. They can’t force a flawed poll on Kenyans. We will resist. We will reject. We will triumph,” he told the Star.
The other option is for the IEBC to push on with the polls, despite the monumental challenges it faces. Sources said some returning officers are persuading the officials, including clerks who participated in the August 8 polls, to turn up on Election Day even without fresh training.
This is in the hope that many will not turn up to vote in NASA areas after Raila and his running mate Kalonzo Musyoka withdrew from the election. The IEBC is also toying with the idea of deploying tight security and poll officials who have been trained in other counties.
The third option – which is now quite unlikely – is to move to the Supreme Court for a postponement of the entire vote because of the political standoff. This was the preferred route for Chebukati and former commissioner Roselyne Akombe after Raila withdrew from the contest.But Chebukati was vetoed by a majority of commissioners, who insisted the vote should proceed as scheduled.
Today, Chebukati is scheduled to meet President Uhuru Kenyatta, but it remains unclear whether the Jubilee leader will honour the invite. Uhuru snubbed Chebukati on Thursday last week and went flat out on a vote- hunting spree. “We are not interested in telling the IEBC what to do. We want them to prepare so Kenyans can vote on the 26th,” a defiant Uhuru said in Saboti, unperturbed by Chebukati’s threats to resign.
Chebukati had warned he would resign if Uhuru and Raila fail to douse the political tension threatening to dismember the nation.After Akombe’s resignation, Chebukati also warned that he could not guarantee the credibility of the polls. But the IEBC boss appears to have changed his position after CEO Ezra Chiloba went on three-weeks’ leave.
In an interview published in the Sunday Nation, the 56-year-old lawyer said his Project Team is now fully in charge. “A lot of changes have taken place. The Project Team is fully in charge now, with the commissioners pulling in the same direction, contrary to what has been seen in the past,” Chebukati said. He signaled that he was not about to resign, saying he did not want to foment a crisis but play a role in sorting it out. Yesterday, Chebukati did not answer calls or text messages sent to his cellphone.
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