PRESS STATEMENT BY HON RAILA ODINGA ON IEBC ELECTION SPENDING RULES:
After failing in its core mandate, which is “to conduct free and fair elections and to institutionalise a sustainable electoral process” the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission yesterday embarked on another scatter-brained project whose end result will be to bastardise our politics further and reduce the country’s leadership to an auction to the highest bidder.
IEBC’s so-called rules on election financing puts this already discredited organisation at the peak of State institutions that have become Laundromats for the corrupt in the Jubilee regime.
To claim that presidential campaigns are allowed to spend up to Ksh5 billion, governors, senators and Women Reps up to Ksh400 million, Members of National Assembly up to Ksh33 million and Members of County assembly up to Ksh10 million is clearly an attempt to limit the country’s leadership to the monied elite regardless of how the money has been acquired.
A coded message is being sent out to Kenyans that those not in the league of multi billionaires have no business vying for any position in the coming elections. This is Jubilee’s plan to buy elections with our stolen money. It is consistent with Jubilee’s gospel of money that is being peddled in the form of harambees and as facilitation to incumbents to defect. The plan is being sold to the public by a pliant IEBC. Kenyans must strongly reject it.
With this move, the IEBC has done nothing other than pre-justify planned pre-plunder of the nation and create an avenue for Jubilee to launder the money stolen from the Eurobond, the NYS, the gambling and the many procurement tenders that have been part and parcel of Jubilee rule. The figures themselves seem based on an assumption that everyone running for an elective post is a thief of state, a “tenderpreneur” or a drug dealer.
IEBC has no structures to enforce these rules. The organisation is itself so steeped in “tenderpreneur” economics that no one can expect it to stand up against politicians wielding billions of shillings.
It is even more curious that in the era when public participation in decision making is a constitutional requirement, IEBC consulted nobody or political party before coming up with these ridiculous rules. We would have expected IEBC to consult Kenyans and political parties how to control acquisition of money for campaign spending. We would have expected consultations on how to contain the flow into our country of illicit money that is used to subvert our electoral process; including the buying of IEBC officials and judges of the Supreme Court. Instead, out of the blues, we are being told how many billions people are allowed to spend.
This is terrible plan to corrupt the political process while at the same time ravaging the economy. We saw it in 1992. We don’t want a repeat. That the IEBC saw no shame in putting out without any consultations just conforms that this discredited organisation will shamelessly do anything to please Jubilee and help it in 2017. The least that the IEBC commissioners can do for the country at this moment is to pack their belongings, collect their pay and leave Kenyans alone to chart their destiny with a new team of officials.
HON RAILA ODINGA; EGH.
CORD COALITION/ ODM PARTY LEADER
12TH AUGUST 2016.
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