JOINT OPPOSITION PRESS STATEMENT: JUBILEE AND IEBC LAYING GROUND FOR SHAM ELECTIONS:
We have called you this afternoon to alert the people of Kenya of the pre-election rigging scheme similar to that of 2013 already underway and that portends no good for our country.
Kenyans are not ready for another sham election whose results are being determined now, long before any vote has been cast.
There are signs that the Jubilee Administration, in collaboration with the sacked IEBC officials are working overdrive to pre-empt the will of the people next year through a number of underhand ways.
First, we are seeing clear delays in the implementation of time-bound processes that are meant to ensure free, fair, transparent and credible elections.
It begun with delays in the publication of the elections law amendment Bill before it was introduced to Parliament.
Once Parliament passed the Bill, we saw an unexplained delay in the presentation of the Bill to the President for assent.
Upon receiving the Bill, the President then took his time to assent to it, ignoring the urgency that necessitated the coming together across the political divide to agree on this Bill.
There was further delay in the publication of the Act after the president’s assent.
Further delays were experienced as follows; in the Commencement of the Act, in appointing the panel to reconstitute the IEBC, in the assumption of office by the Selection Panel on the grounds that there was no Chief Justice to swear-in members. This has now been capped with a protracted appointment of new commissioners.
As these delays have persisted, the sacked and discredited commissioners remain in office, using their extended stay to tilt the electoral infrastructure in favour of Jubilee through acts of omission and commission.
One of such acts of commission resulting from the illegitimate stay of sacked commissioners in office is the appointment of KPMG to conduct an audit of the voter register.
Kenyans know that IEBC has several registers that were used in the rigging of the 2013 elections. IEBC knows it too. As KPMG is being appointed to audit the register, nobody knows which register is being audited.
Nobody knows what the methodology, parameters and standards are against which the audit will take place. In essence IEBC plans to audit its own register in an opaque manner known only to itself and against the spirit of the negotiated settlement
During the 2013 election petitions, it was clear that IEBC had multiplicity of registers, all with different details. To date, to our knowledge, IEBC has no single master register that is clean and known to all players.
The so-called audit by KPMG is set to take place without the biometrics of voters which is part of the requirement in the negotiated law.
The audit also ought to be carried out after voters have confirmed that they are in the register so that the confirmed register becomes the master register.
That aside, there is no known record of KPMG experience with voter-related audit. How it won the contract remains everyone’s guess. It has been hired as a user-friendly firm to do the bidding of Jubilee and discredited IEBC commissioners who have a score to settle with CORD.
All these processes have proceeded with the exclusion of the technical committee on ICT whose involvement is part of the new election laws.
As these illegalities continue, IEBC commissioners have engaged surrogates to move to court and challenge the negotiated election laws and particularly the provisions that voting be done through e integrated technological system.
Then in a move that clearly shows Jubilee intends to use its incumbency and numbers, Parliament has been recalled to adopt a motley of laws on elections with the ultimate aim of throwing out the negotiated agreement and reverting to the old order that allows dead people and under age people to vote, ballot stuffing and manual voting because these favour Jubliee.
We are therefore sending out an alert that the spirit and letter of the Accord that was reached at through bipartisan negotiations must be respected and that as Opposition, we will not be party to the removal of even a comma from that agreement.
We are sending a warning that if Jubilee and the sacked IEBC commissioners insist on the path they have taken, the country will be back to pre-negotiations square one with the attendant consequences. The choice is in the hands of Jubilee and the IEBC.
Kenyans are watching.
SIGNED:
RT. HON RAILA ODINGA
HON MUSALIA MUDAVADI
DECEMBER 16, 2016.
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