Tell Kenyans what went wrong in 2013, IEBC challenged

IEBC Chairman Ahmed Issack Hassan should tell Kenyans the errors encountered during the 2013 General Elections before promising to rectify them in the next elections, says Siaya deputy Governor Wilson Ouma Onyango.

According to Onyango, Mr. Hassan should first outline some of the mistakes which he thinks the electoral commission made in the last elections.

While speaking in Mombasa on Monday, the IEBC chairman exuded confidence that the commission is capable of conducting free and fair elections in 2017, and that they are also ready to rectify the 2013 mistakes.

But Mr. Ouma has challenged him to instead disclose the mistakes and highlight some of the solutions that they intend to put in place to regain people’s confidence in the commission.

The Deputy Governor says that the discussion to resolve the IEBC impasse should not just be limited to the commissioners but to key contentious issues including the proposed audit of the current voter register.

He lamented that there is no way that the presidential votes could total up to 12 million when the votes for the other posts including that of Governors, Senators, Women Representatives, MPs and MCAs was only 10 million.

Mr. Ouma argues that these are some of the issues that Mr. Hassan should clarify before promising to rectify them.

He at the same time appealed to the Jubilee administration to take the matters of negotiations over the IEBC stalemate seriously, noting that the committee to discuss IEBC issues should consist of sober minded characters.

The Deputy Governor wondered if the Jubilee administration was really serious when it selected Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria to be among its negotiators, saying nothing constructive can come out of him (Kuria).

Report by George Amolo