The IEBC, long pilloried for bungling elections, will today get yet another golden chance to demonstrate that the mistakes of the past form lessons upon which better and transparent poll results can be expected.
Chairman Erastus Ethekon, successor to clumsy Wafula Chebukati, will be aware that the attention of the entire nation will be on him and his team.
During a pre-election press conference on Tuesday, he announced that the commission takes no instructions from anybody.
It is a reassuring statement to make, but his management style and judgment will be tested like never before.
The commission, more often than not, always take logistical ineptitude to new dumbfounding levels.
Cases of ballot papers delivered to the wrong polling stations.
Polling stations opened long after the deadline breached.
Returning officers showing obvious bias.
And in a first in 2022, two counties – Mombasa and Kakamega – that could not vote for a governor yet the organisation is packed with qualified and computer savvy staff capable of complex logistical undertakings.
The pressure on Ethekon will be stultifying.
But he will have taken the job knowing what to expect.
The chairman must demand transparency, integrity and accountability from every officer he will deploy today.
“The past is the present, isn’t it? It’s the future, too. We all try to
lie out of that but life won’t let us.”
—The American playwright Eugene O’Neill died on November 27, 1953
