Raila's new demands to IEBC

Thirty-five days to the General Election, one of the key players in the August 9th State House contest is raising more issues with the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission’s state of preparedness.

Azimio La Umoja One Kenya coalition party presidential candidate Raila Odinga, through his chief legal advisor Paul Mwangi has raised issues with IEBC Chair Wafula Chebukati, questioning his silence on a series of letters he has written to him, pointing gaps in the process of preparing for the August 9th polls.

Key among them is the sticky issue of a complementary mechanism for the identification of voters. Odinga is seeking assurances from Chebukati that physical voter registration will be available in all the 46,232 polling stations, citing the High Court order issued on June 24th, staying Chebukati’s administrative directive barring the use of manual registers as an alternative mechanism of voter identification.

“What concerns us is not that we insist you don’t use technology, yes use technology, use all the systems that have been described, whether you use them or not, but the law requires that you have them…” says Paul Mwangi.

Odinga is also reminding Chebukati of a letter he sent him last month, requesting a certified copy of the digital register of voters for scrutiny before the country heads to the ballot in August to enhance transparency and credibility in the exercise.

The Azimio presidential flagbearer terming unsettling, the commission chairman’s failure to respond to his letter dated June 27, seeking a list of all polling stations together with their geo-reference, information on Kenya Integrated Election Management System (KIEMS) kits, training of election officials, election management and measures taken against IEBC officials implicated in the illegal transfer of voters.

Though IEBC met the four presidential candidates last week, to iron out their grievances, Odinga has expressed dissatisfaction with some of the responses, and requested a bilateral consultative meeting with the commission within seven days.

Odinga has also penned two letters to Chebukati, seeking answers on the printing of ballot papers and uploading of the voter register into the KIEMS kits.

He is requesting IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati to facilitate his team’s tour of the Inform Lykos printing press in Athens, Greece where the August 9th ballot papers are being processed to ensure accountability and transparency.

Odinga also wants his technical experts to be granted an opportunity to inspect the processes of preparing the KIEMS kits, in conjunction with IEBC’s technical team alongside those of Smartmatic International, the company that was contracted to supply election technology.