- The amended IEBC Act commences on February 6.
- President William Ruto would be able to name the panel from next Monday.
Image: Handout
UDA has asked their Azimio counterparts to train their energies on the quality of men and women who will be picked to form the IEBC selection panel.
The President William Ruto-led party, while rebuffing assertions by the opposition that the law was changed in a ploy by Ruto to control the polls agency, said for the new law, the horse had already bolted.
For the ruling party, the law of the selection panel has been passed and the focus should shift to the quality of persons who will be nominated to interview the next crop of poll chiefs.
“The law of the selection panel has now been passed. We should, therefore, shift our focus to the quality of persons who will be nominated by different institutions to undertake the task of recruiting the IEBC chairperson and Commissioners,” UDA secretary general Veronica Maina said on Wednesday.
“The nominees to this selection panel must be persons of integrity and competent enough to demonstrate the requisite capacity to undertake this task,” she told the Star.
The enacted law commences on February 6, meaning Ruto would be able to name the panel from next Monday.
It would comprise nominees from Parliament, the Public Service Commission, the Law Society of Kenya, the Political Parties Liaison Committee, and the Interreligious Council of Kenya.
Azimio politicians have accused Ruto of seeking to control IEBC through the new law, drawing their conclusion from the introduction of the PSC to the panel.
The opposition claimed that since PSC falls under the ambit of the Executive, the latter may have excessive say on who joins the elections management body.
Recently, Senator Okiya Omtatah claimed ‘an invisible powerful hand’ forced the chairman of the Senate Justice committee to abandon amendments by members.
He argued that much as the law reduces the number of parliamentary nominees to two, it maintained dominance by the state through the PSC and the PPLC.
But the ruling party UDA says there was no direct link.
“The claim that the Executive would have an upper hand in the selection - by the sheer composition of the panel, is far from the truth,” Maina said.
She added, “The Executive has no control over the LSK, clergy, and even of Parliamentary Service Commission which has representation from both majority and minority.”
Maina said there was no clear link to how the leaning of the Executive is coming in.
“If you remove LSK and the clergy, those are three votes. Parliament has a balance of one each from either side, and PPLC has one too. This means the government has no control over six posts. How does it then show the leaning?”
She further allayed fears that the panel would affect how the next general election would be handled.
“The selection panel as proposed by the National Assembly and endorsed through a majority vote by Senate is a balanced panel which will not handle the actual process of managing elections or determining election results. Their mandate will only be limited to receiving applications from those interested to serve in the commission as chairperson or commissioner,” Maina explained.
The UDA secretary said that to the party, the law is ‘very balanced’; therefore, the argument that political parties should have been given more slots does not hold.
“We have about 86 political parties, how easy would it be to select one to represent the rest in the panel?” Maina asked.
She said in an interview with the Star that the blend achieved in the new law would help boost public confidence in the process.
“When you find a mix in a blend which involves the clergy, it is for very good reasons. Kenyans feel that most objective people would not come from just the political sector.”
“That blend is okay and is a balance that would endorse a lot of confidence from Kenyans. The selection panel is actually not the body of the commissioners,” she said.
Maina argued that leaving the process solely to political parties “would ignite disharmony more than harmony.”
“It will also cause more conflict than good. The injection from different sectors of people who would then be seen not to be aligned is also a very good way,” she said.
On these grounds, Maina held that “Okiya Omtatah’s article is misguided in the sense that he seems to insinuate that the selection panel is the body of the commissioners that will eventually serve in the IEBC.”
On the inclusion of PSC, the UDA official said the move was to tap into the human resource expertise – being the body mandated in Kenya to deal with human resource issues.
“It is an expert in issues that deal with workforce, and competencies, and has a lot of experience in the recruitment of qualified personnel entrusted in service delivery to the members of the public. Their wealth of experience then comes in handy,” Maina said.
-Edited by SKanyara