I will resign if found culpable, says electoral agency CEO

So what’s going on at the IEBC?

A lot of things have been happening. We were all waiting for the Supreme Court decision, which was delivered. We’ve been reflecting on the decision for the purposes of fulfilling our mandate. Now, we are busy planning for the fresh presidential election as ordered by the Supreme Court.

Everybody has made their view on the Supreme Court ruling known. What are your personal views on this ruling as a person who actually conducted this election?

It’s one of the things we never expected, given that we worked very hard to win the case. However, the Supreme Court has propounded itself with its ruling.

We respect their judgment. If you look at any working democracy, you find that independent institutions work to check each other.

We had our day in court and, of course, we have to respect the order as directed by this court and, hopefully, meet the new obligations as laid out.

FRESH ELECTION

We now have under 60 days to run a fresh election, but we still don’t know what we need to improve on for the purposes of ensuring that the next elections meet the standards set.

We are waiting to understand the key reasons  the August election was annulled and what we need to improve on so as to achieve better results in the new election.

The findings that the court made were an indictment on IEBC, which you head. Do you think this is an extension of the indictment on you as a person and the way you conducted these elections?

We do not know yet the reasons as to why the court reached that decision, and that’s why it is important for us to have a detailed judgment. Our suspicion is that most of it could be about processes in terms of results transmission, and we are keen to know the details. I wouldn’t say it’s an indictment on me as an individual but rather as an institution.

Have you been asked to resign?

Not at all. No one has been asked to resign. The position of the commission has been that we need to wait for the detailed judgment from the Supreme Court, audit ourselves and look at the areas for improvement,  then we move from there. The question about resignation becomes difficult now because no one is able to tell where the responsibility lies, unless you get the details.

If the full ruling comes out and there is evidence that you were culpable as an individual, will you resign?

I will.

The ruling talked about illegalities and irregularities on the part of your commission. Did you play any role in this?

Where you have irregularities and illegalities, these don’t necessarily lead to criminality. The latter means that you intentionally tried to play the system, and that was not the case in our handling of the election process.

If anything, a lot that went right can be counted and is self-evident. We had 1,882 elective positions across the country and they went through the same process and, in more than 95 per cent, people were satisfied with the outcome.

You don’t take that on the face value. It’s not really an individual’s perspective, but the commission’s. We need to wait for the detailed judgment. To me, the question then is: What is it that constitutes an irregularity and an illegality that violated the Constitution and the Elections Act?

This week we saw the chairman of the commission name a new project team that will be in charge of the fresh election. What is your take on that?

We’ve always run our major operations under project teams, including voter registration, education, tallying centre management and such. This isn’t a new idea, but how we operate within IEBC. What the chair was demonstrating to the country is that we are getting ready for the elections and this is how we operate.

So the Chairman of the commission did not sideline you in any way?

I would not look at it like that. The team cannot work without the rest of us. We have more than 800 people working at IEBC and these teams needs support. From where I sit, this is a good idea, and we need to ensure that we ensure they are well facilitated and supported so as to give their best for the country.

What are your thoughts on the leaked chairman’s memo?

We are looking at the issues raised in the memo and we will respond in the interest of the public. We will provide proper answers and explanations on the same. The commissioners have issued a response with regard to this memo and I don’t think it should now be a big deal for now.

What can the public expect from the commission, given what is currently going on especially between the secretariat and a group of commissioners?

From an institutional point of view, Kenya has made progress and that is why the judiciary is able to make judgments that are accepted and respected by everyone.

As a commission, we have said that we’ve made a lot of gains in the manner in which we have managed these elections, irrespective of the court’s ruling. However, we have ended up being victims of our own circumstances. On a positive note, if we go to the October elections with the optimism we had before August and manage it successfully, then we will have succeeded. We have less than two months, and we have to pull through with improved systems and infrastructure. 

Your commission seems to be working in the dark without a full ruling, and we have already seen it giving updates about the new election date. How is this happening?

We have spent the past few days planning for the new election. We are working on the register, gazetting the polling stations, and readying the technology that we will use. From next week, we will expect to have a lot of activities. We have finalised the budget and will be presenting it to the Treasury for approval. All these things have to happen day and night.

What’s your budget for the October election?

We project about KSh12 billion ($116 million) most of which will go towards human resources and logistics.

Do you think Kenyans trust your commission to hold and deliver a free and fair election in October?

The question should be whether the public believe in democratic institutions. If democracy has to work, then the institutions’ roles matter. For countries that are highly polarised, the issue of such institutions is debatable. Kenyans must believe in us to deliver the election. The IEBC has, since 2009, been temporal. Every two years we see changes. This election was our opportunity to show them what we could do.

Did any of the evidence, like the Form 34Bs that came before the Supreme Court, surprise you?

If you look at our court arguments, our responsibility was to ensure that we safeguarded the will of the people. If the results were consistent all the way from the polling stations to our tallying centres, yet the returning officer filled the results in a form that didn’t have the security feature, then does that invalidate the outcome? It shouldn’t.

However, we haven’t been able to establish the cause of those discrepancies and we read foul play, malice and games from some of our officers, given the excuses some of them came up with for these minor discrepancies. This will be handled internally as the processes provide. Nowhere in the world will you get a perfect system and, in fact, when it is too perfect, think twice about it.

Were your IT systems compromised in any way?

No, this didn’t happen. If there is anything, and for the assurance of the Kenyan people on what actually transpired, it is important that we get an independent entity to come and look at the systems, in the company of the political parties’ representatives, so that this matter is resolved once and for all.

I know the court scrutiny process, when it came to ICT system, asked us to allow access to specific servers to the system and provide logs for that.

We did that, but the petitioner and the others demanded to know the source of these logs, that’s why we had to go back to the IT service providers and this took time because of the high security framework governing this particular system.

We were working both in Nairobi and Europe with our partners, as our servers were hosted by one of the best cloud firms called Entity. The compromise could not have happened with all the layers of security as these firms provide a very secure cloud service. 

Were you on anyone’s side while managing the August election?

My loyalty is to the people of Kenya and the Constitution. I did not take up this job because I wanted to please any party or individual. I did not vote, because I don’t want my preference when it comes to voting to affect my judgments when it comes to my role in the commission. A lot of things have been said about my character, but I know myself and what I stand for.