NASA pushes for removal of 11 IEBC officials

The opposition National Super Alliance (NASA) has reiterated their earlier stance of not accepting to go into the new presidential election with IEBC as currently constituted, demanding that eleven staff members be barred from taking part in the preparations for the fresh polls.

The electoral commission CEO Ezra Chiloba, Commissioner Abdi Guliye,  James Muhati, Betty Nyabuto, Immaculate Kassait, Marjan Hussein and five others are on the opposition’s spotlight, with NASA arguing that they facilitated the illegalities and irregularities that led to Supreme Court’s nullification of the August 8 presidential election.

“A scrutiny of the Forms 34Bs from the constituencies showed that 80 constituency forms were fake and therefore illegal. Officers who were complicit in processing results through these illegal Forms being the respective returning officers and national tallying center officers who allowed the illegal documents to pass as results should not play any role in the fresh electoral process,” read the letter from NASA Chief Agent Musalia Mudavadi.

NASA have also tabled a list of demands that they say are not negotiable and IEBC has to follow or they will boycott the October 17 poll.

Security features

Among the reasons the Supreme Court decided to nullify last month election were that some ballot papers were not signed by all the party agents and respective returning officers while some did not have the official IEBC watermark and other conventional security features.

NASA now demands that this time round all the security features to be available on the vote papers.

Owing to the fact that the Al Ghurair Printing Company produced some non-standardized election result forms and voting papers, the opposition now wants IEBC to contract a new printing firm for the fresh elections.

In addition to standardization all Forms 34A, 34B, 34C, NASA wants an additional feature in the forms allowing election monitors to also sign off just like party agents before results are announced at the constituency tallying center.

In a move that is likely to be perceived as interference with the independence of the electoral commission, they are proposing that NASA and Jubilee be given the chance to appoint all returning officers.

“IEBC should provide a list of all polling stations and registered voters per all those polling stations in advance. List should indicate the GPS locations of all polling stations and the network coverage,” continued the letter.

NASA also wants only scanned images of election result forms to be sent through the KIEMS kit to the constituency and national tallying centers and not text messages as was witnessed in last month’s bundled election.