The opposition coalition, Cord, is finally heeding what I have been suggesting for months in this column — that it could remove officials of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission from office only through public pressure.
It is not in contention that IEBC chairman Issack Hassan and his team are grossly tainted and can’t be expected to conduct a fair election in 2017. Increasingly, even Jubilee supporters now express doubt about the utility of fighting to retain the current IEBC leadership. Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria, who owes his election and much more to President Uhuru Kenyatta, has publicly voiced support for the campaign to reform the IEBC.
The divergence between Cord and these Jubilee leaders seems to be on the process rather than justification. Kuria and company advocate that the commissioners be removed through a petition to Parliament – the straightest route prescribed in the constitution.
However, every sane observer of our politics knows the pitfalls of such a process. Cord has tried it before and failed, thanks to Jubilee’s parliamentary majority, the ‘tyranny of numbers’ that blocks any legislation advanced by the Cord coalition.
A year ago, Cord activist Wafula Buke’s petition to Parliament on this issue hit a brick wall not on account of evidence but because Jubilee MPs supported IEBC at all costs. Since Cord is relying on more or less the same facts Buke canvassed then, there are only slim prospects that a new motion would meet a different fate.
Some Jubilee MPs say circumstances have changed and Cord should expect a fair hearing this time around. Well, hope shouldn’t be Cord’s strategy. On the flipside, Kuria and other Jubilee MPs who have seen the light can initiate a parliamentary motion to remove IEBC, in the absence of which Cord should exhaust all options available to it.
The IEBC imbroglio offers Jubilee a golden chance to not only deflate the opposition on a resonant issue but also to prove wrong those who believe the government will use its power to prevent a fair election from taking place.
Instead of curtailing the Cord supporters’ right to assemble, the government should be pursuing dialogue on how to make the electoral process credible. Instead of fighting to preserve the integrity of people whose bribe-taking prowess has been revealed to the whole world, and their accomplishes jailed in the UK for paying bribes, the government should strive to attain some modicum of value for elections.
Under current IEBC officials, our election could be more like Uganda’s or Ethiopia’s, whose results are known long in advance of voting.
But Kenya is the opposite of those countries. Notwithstanding the growing militarisation – police armoured personnel carriers and the dastardly water cannons – folks here have a sense of their rights and shouldn’t be pushed to the wall.
There are many ways in which Kenya now resembles Uganda. Civil society is curtailed. Parliament is functioning by and large as an executive rubber stamp. The media preaches false patriotism. Still, there is a red line – use of excessive force.