The 1st Vice President of the Institution of Engineers of Kenya Grace Kagondu has called for fresh elections terming the March 21 polls “a sham and failure”.
Kagondu, who is seeking to replace Erick Ohaga as the President, said eligible members were denied their basic fundamental right to vote.
“Voting is their constitutional right which should not have been violated or denied on any grounds whatsoever,” she said.
Provisional results put Kagondu’s rival Shammah Kiteme ahead. Kagondu has been serving as the 1st Vice President for the 2022-24 term.
Addressing a press briefing, Kagondu said she hopes the matter will be addressed during the institution’s Annual General Meeting slated for April 5, 2024.
The voting was conducted through an online platform.
Kagondu said many members eligible to vote were frustrated and disenfranchised of their right to vote due to technical failures in the voting platform.
“By engineering standards, the voting platform was a failure of unacceptable degree,” she said.
Kagondu further said the system was extremely slow, taking up to even four hours or more for the voting process to conclude.
“Many engineers gave up given the nature of their work which normally involves fieldwork, site visits and long meetings,” she said claiming that there were also non-human agents accessing the system.
She said the issues raised have greatly affected the transparency, integrity and validity of the IEK electoral process.
“The credibility and legitimacy of IEK polls depends on the transparent and proper conduct of elections. Any doubts or concerns raised regarding the accuracy or integrity of the electoral process must be addressed with urgency and thoroughness,” she stressed.
The provisional results were officially released by the Chair of Scrutineers Jedidah Maina on March 22.
Maina acknowledged the slowness experienced in the system and attributed it to unusual activity on the server.
“Regarding the system displaying the list of candidates when you log in, we want to clarify that the link used for both the mock and actual election is the same. It is possible that your computer retains the data from the mock election,” Maina added.
She said her team is actively working to resolve the issues promptly.
Howard M’mayi, a member of EIK said elections are supposed to be transparent and verifiable
“I always believe in an election, everyone deserves to win or lose fairly. This is critical in many ways but importantly it helps candidates handle the outcome with ease,” he said.
Kagondu said a forensic audit is now a critical and urgent step in salvaging the credibility of IEK as a professional society of engineers.
“It is expected to be done by an independent and neutral third party to investigate all logs and activities performed on the system before, during and after the voting took place,” she said.
