The altercation between factions of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission would have been comical if it weren't tragic. The supposedly impartial supervisor of elections is a tragedy of great expectations.
Three commissioners on one side at the Bomas National Tallying Centre, and four at the Serena Hotel, are trading blames for bungled elections. Elections, which nearly drove the country to a civil war in 2007, have been twice messed in five years, by the same commission under the leadership of Wafula Chebukati.
Taxpayers gave about Sh44 billion to an IEBC that has created a divisive feud that makes Kenya the butt of international ridicule.
Commissioners Chebukati, Abdi Guliye and Boya Molu were in the team that defiled presidential elections five years ago. Once again they are in a worse mess than the one that ended up with the Supreme Court ordering a fresh presidential election.
It was a double waste to the economy and loss of many productive hours. This, again, is a double waste, even before the Supreme Court gives direction.
The challenge cannot be incompetence of the commission; it cannot be poor funding of the electoral agency. It is compromise; it is a case of IEBC sucking up to vested interests. The irony of the criminality of the conduct of IEBC baffles.
On July 27, two weeks before the August 9 General Election, this columnist wrote: "Allegations of factional infighting are widely reported at IEBC. The chasm between the chairman Wafula Chebukati and politically-correct commissioners on one side, and the commissioners who were appointed last year on the other, signals conspiracies.
"IEBC needs four of seven commissioners to vote on an issue or against. Right does not always belong to the majority. The conscientious minority may represent public interest."
The columnist further wrote, "IEBC has always been a citadel of conspiracies. The fates of the late Samuel Kivuitu and Isaack Hassan – Chebukati's recent predecessors – should worry the electoral agency's insider saboteurs of democracy."
The late Kivuitu, as chairman of the defunct Electoral Commission of Kenya, bungled the 2007 presidential election. He declared an unmerited win to the late Mwai Kibaki. Kivuitu became a pariah among his peers.
Hassan bungled the 2013 presidential election, whose results were disputed in the Supreme Court. He was later ejected from the leadership of the electoral agency. Dejected, he soon disappeared into oblivion, shunned and disgraced.
The same column used the word 'opaque' three weeks before it found practical meaning in the dissenting views of IEBC vice chairperson Juliana Cherera and her co-commissioners Francis Wanderi, Justus Nyang'aya and Irene Masit.
"Citizens demand free and fair elections. The process should be simple and verifiable. But the electoral agency is deliberately opaque or sucking up to vested interests."
Fifteen days after the vote, citizens are dealing with, and will have to offset the cost of the opacity of the partial IEBC. The altercations among the commissioners, so far, herald what voters should expect from the proceedings of the presidential election dispute at the Supreme Court.
The four say Chebukati disappeared with presidential scores, and then returned later with a tally that did not reflect what the commissioners know to have been the case. The dissenters accuse Chebukati of lying that the four wanted a presidential runoff. The Supreme Court will arbitrate the accusations and counter-accusations among the IEBC commissioners.
This is the absurd reality a compromised commission has created. IEBC-cynics expected this, the signs of compromise were always obvious.
The architects of the 2017 mess did not pay for the bungle. Repeating the irregularities smacks of impunity. Citizens should hold Chebukati, personally, and collectively, responsible for the desecration of democracy twice during his compromised tenure.
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