The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has raised fears the tight timelines it is working under are bound to severely hamper preparedness and delivery of the General Election slated for August, next year.
The tightly-clustered timelines have been set by the new law that also recommended the re-constitution of the commission with less than a year to the polls.
IEBC chief executive Ezra Chiloba yesterday expressed concerns that with 257 days to the election, the commission is yet undergoing a transition process.
“We only have eight months before the elections and the commissioners will join us with seven months to, but we must prepare for the elections,” he said.
Another issue Chiloba raised was procurement and putting in place technology to be used in the elections, which should be done eight months before the actual date and technically the process should be commencing two weeks from now.
IEBC must have been prepared well in advance and its data made available to polling stations in biometric kits, which requires at least 30 days to load data in about 50,000 kits before it can be dispatched to the field. And to have a credible and a transparent process, Chiloba said it would require an open tender, which requires 120 days to accomplish.
“So while we agree that it was necessary to acquire technology in good time, we also have to look at its other aspects between the time that the law became operational and when we were supposed to put in the new technology…we are working on how to recover time to allow us to test and train people before elections,” he said.
Another headache is registration of Kenyans living abroad, with those eligible to vote estimated to be 30,000 plus. He said IEBC will begin another phase of voter registration next year, between February and March, as planned in the initial election plan which includes planned registration of an estimated three million Kenyans living abroad.
However, owing to new processes and timelines, Chiloba said the exercise must be brought forward alongside the entire registration programme in the country. And, amid proposals to have the election date postponed, Chiloba was categorical that IEBC is sticking to August 8 and will not prepare for any other date, affirming that they will fight for the schedule to remain unchanged.
He also said, as much as the Commission is embracing technology for the entire election process, only the registration will be done through biometric kits while voting will be conducted manually. But there is still a lot of technology procurement yet to be completed.
Even as the diaspora voting is being advocated for, Chiloba explained it is only possible to allow the presidential vote abroad, or a referendum should the need arise, owing to logistical complications.
Key among the issues IEBC is grappling with in implementing the diaspora vote is unreliable data for an electoral process, said Chiloba, noting that they need to know the exact numbers rather than approximation.
IEBC has set that registration centres for voting in host countries but these must have at least 3,000 registered at Kenyan missions to allow the Commission establish a centre. Data as late as September, said Chiloba, indicated that Australia has 27,000 registered Kenyans against a population of 30,000, Germany while 7,000 registered against an estimated 15,000 population.
The United States and London have 25,000 and 9,000 registered Kenyans against a population of 400,000 and 200,000 respectively. Chiloba said the new timelines are set to allow register verification or inspection within, starting April 10, to allow 120 days before the elections.
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