NAIROBI (Reuters) – Three Kenyan election officials resigned on Monday, increasing chaos at the electoral Commission following last year\u2019s botched presidential vote that had to be rerun and was then boycotted by the opposition.<\/p>\n
The resignations leave only two commissioners and the chairman at the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) which last week sent its chief executive on three months\u2019 compulsory leave pending an audit on procurement matters.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe events related to the purported vote (to suspend the CEO) have greatly shaken our already feeble confidence in the chair,\u201d IEBC Vice Chairwoman Consolata Nkatha Maina and commissioners Margaret Mwachanya and Paul Kurgat said in a statement, adding that not all of the six commissioners were present, as required, when the vote happened.<\/p>\n
IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati said in a statement on Monday evening that the three officials who quit \u201chave not returned the public assets entrusted to them\u201d and said that the commission\u2019s \u201coperations are on course\u201d despite the resignations and the ongoing audit.<\/p>\n
Senate majority leader Kipchumba Murkomen said Chebukati and the two remaining commissioners should resign within a week or a tribunal would be formed to investigate them.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy call for IEBC Commissioners to resign is informed by recent wrangles linked to the fight for tenders plus control and manipulation of IEBC staff,\u201d Murkomen said on Twitter.<\/p>\n
Last year\u2019s election re-run raised fears of a return to political violence in Kenya where more than 1,200 people were killed after a disputed poll in 2007, although President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga appeared to put their fierce rivalry behind them last month.<\/p>\n
Even before the Aug. 8 vote, many Kenyans, including Odinga, were querying IEBC\u2019s ability to ensure a free and fair election. A few days before the ballot, a commission official was found dead in unclear circumstances.<\/p>\n
In October, another commissioner, Roselyn Akombe, quit a week before the rerun, saying she and her staff had been repeatedly threatened.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NAIROBI (Reuters) – Three Kenyan election officials resigned on Monday, increasing chaos at the electoral Commission following last year\u2019s botched presidential vote that had to be rerun and was then boycotted by the opposition. The resignations leave only two commissioners and the chairman at the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) which last week sent its chief executive on three… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1579"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1580,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1579\/revisions\/1580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}