A row has hampered the minority party - Azimio - from settling on a nominee to represent it in the nine-member panel.
As a result, the Parliamentary Service Commission is unable to send the list of the nominees to the President.
The deadline for the nominating agencies to send representatives to PSC for the listing lapsed on July 29.
But whereas the Political Parties Liaison Committee had nominated Augustus Muli to represent the coalition, the council has rejected his bid.
In a letter to the PSC, Azimio secretary general Junet Mohamed said the PPLC list falls short of the requirement for gender balance.
The IEBC Amendment Act 2024 provided that PPLC strikes a balance of thirds in its nominees.
The outfit however nominated Evans Misati – its current chairperson, Nicodemus Bore for majority party and Augustus for the majority party – all men.
Azimio, in the letter by Junet, has told PSC it wants Augustus replaced by Koki Muli of Wiper party to achieve gender balance.
“The coalition resolved to nominate Koki Muli Grignon from Wiper Democratic Movement as the most suitable and competent nominee and formally submitted her name to the registrar of political parties for onward transmission to the PPLC for endorsement,” the letter reads.
Junet dismissed the PPLC’s endorsement of three men as its nominees, citing an outright contravention of the IEBC laws requiring the mix of gender.
The formation of the selection panel was envisioned as the first step to resolving the constitutional crisis posed by a non-functional electoral commission.
IEBC presently has no commissioners after chairman Wafula Chebukati and commissioners, Boya Molu and Abdi Guliye, retired in January last year.
Other four commissioners - Juliana Cherera, Francis Wanderi, Justus Nyang’aya and Irene Masit - were kicked out for rejecting Ruto’s election as president.
But with the row at the PPLC, the situation is projected to persist for a while, to the chagrin of constituencies and wards without representatives.
PSC thus holds the key to ending the crisis at the electoral commission, which has affected review of boundaries as required by the constitution every 12 years.
Once gazetted, the panel will invite Kenyans to apply for the positions of chairman and commissioner, and shortlist the candidates for interviews.
But that is yet to be seen.
PSC has asked the PPLC to resolve the matter urgently. The commission secretary Jeremiah Nyegenye in a July 29 letter asked the PPLC to address the gender question.
“The three nominees you have forwarded are all of the same gender and therefore not in compliance with sub-paragraph 2c of the First Schedule of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (Amendment) Act, 2024,” Nyegenye wrote.
He also brought to the attention of the PPLC, the reservations by the Azimio la Umoja coalition on the nomination.
The IEBC law says the respective nominating agencies shall ensure that no more than two thirds of the nominees are of the same gender.
Besides the gender factor, Azimio argues that Augustus’ National Liberal Party is not a parliamentary party and that he was vetted by the coalition and found unsuitable.
“The nominee elected to ostensibly represent the Azimio coalition was rejected by the coalition for lacking the requisite qualifications and credential to represent the coalition,” Junet said.
But Augustus has rebuffed the claims and has promised to mount a fightback, including and not limited to seeking court redress on the same. He has since received a court order stopping his removal, with hearing slated for August 15.
“They are shortchanging me just because they think ‘wao ni viongozi’ (they are leaders). It is totally unacceptable,” he said at Lion Place on Wednesday when he sought audience with the Office Of the Registrar Of Political Parties on the matter.
For Augustus, he won the coalition’s nomination fairly during the vote conducted by the IEBC in the presence of the ORPP.
He said the registrar guided the process to the end, out of which he garnered 16 votes against Koki’s seven votes.
“We will fight this to the end. We will go to court and ensure justice is served. We cannot allow them to rig this process. If the rigging is starting with the team that is going to hire IEBC commissioners, are we saying that this is the culture we want to entrench in the team being formed?”
Augustus argues that there is a woman whom the group could have easily picked from the list of non-parliamentary parties that form part of the PPLC squad.
The candidate, Lilian Gor, he says, also defeated Koki in the race hence was best placed to take up the much-needed third slot.
It has since emerged that the two majority party nominated men while minority had Augustus and Koki as its two top nominees.
As per the new law, the PSC has two slots in the panel, three for political parties under the liaison umbrella PPLC, two for inter-religious council and one each for the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Kenya and Law Society of Kenya.
So far, only three slots have been filled successfully, or rather are the ones that are not challenged.
ICPAK nominated Tanui Andrew Kipkoech as its representative.
The Inter-religious Council, for its part, has nominated Nelson Makanda of the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya and Fatma Saman of the National Muslim Leaders Forum.
The nominees for the LSK and PSC were yet to be unveiled. The PSC met on Tuesday but seemingly did not reach a conclusive decision on the matter.
Various members the Star reached out to for updates on progress referred this writer to National Assembly Speaker Moses Wetang’ula, who is the chairperson of the commission.
The Speaker was yet to get back by the time of going to press on the prevailing row that threatens to lengthen the IEBC crisis.
Last week, he said the electoral agency's selection panel was to be gazetted by Tuesday, July 30, to begin the process of recruiting new commissioners. Despite the assurances, that came to naught.
Even as the hiring panel is yet to take shape, experts argue that the new dispensation may not cure the commission's operational rows.
IEBC operations have recently been hampered by cases pitting the secretariat and the commissioners.
This played out prominently in the 2017 general election when stark differences of opinion played out between Chebukati and then-CEO Ezra Chiloba.
The difference was about whether the secretariat or the commissioners should handle critical procurements at the electoral commission.
The Judiciary, Kenya Law Reform Commission, IEBC secretariat, the outgoing IEBC selection panel and some poll experts said the new law needed further scrutiny and redrafting.
