Former IEBC commissioners to decide fate of Raila’s bid for presidency

The nine electoral commissioners who resigned in October will on Tuesday decide the fate of Cord leader Raila Odinga’s bid for the presidency in 2017, the IEBC’s chief executive Ezra Chiloba said on Monday.

The commissioners, Mr Chiloba said, will be meeting and one of the issues will be to make a decision on whether Mr Odinga and tens of other aspirants who failed to open and file campaign accounts with the IEBC before a set December 8 deadline, should be locked out of the race.

This, even as the commission sought to have the implementation of the regulations on campaign financing, expenditure and funds management by candidates pushed to take effect from February 8, 2017, exactly six months to the next polls to include public servants who are supposed to leave office by then to run for political office.

In Summary

The commissioners, Mr Chiloba said, will be meeting and one of the issues will be to make a decision on whether Mr Odinga and tens of other aspirants who failed to open and file campaign accounts with the IEBC before a set December 8 deadline, should be locked out of the race.
This, even as the commission sought to have the implementation of the regulations on campaign financing, expenditure and funds management by candidates pushed to take effect from February 8, 2017, exactly six months to the next polls to include public servants who are supposed to leave office by then to run for political office.

On Monday, Mr Chiloba told a National Assembly Delegated Legislation Committee that the Issack Hassan-led team still provided policy directions to the secretariat “as they are still in office”.

“I am advised, and it is true, that the decision as to what should be the consequence for those that failed to meet the deadline, is a policy direction to be decided by the commission,” he told the committee at Parliament Buildings.

Mr Hassan and the eight commissioners were hounded out of office after five weeks of demonstrations led by Mr Odinga who accused them of incompetence and partisanship in the management of elections.

The Cord leader has consistently argued that the commissioners had become ‘strangers” after they presented their resignation letters to the President in October.

But the commissioners have argued that the negotiated law that saw their exit provided that they should leave only when a new team is formed.

The IEBC selection panel on Monday started interviews for the position of the commission’s chair.

Mr Odinga has refused to comply with the campaign financing regulations that required opening of accounts for the campaigns – whose deadline elapsed on December 8 – telling a court in a case he has filed, that the law was defective.

On Monday, the National Assembly committee said the regulations were null and void as they had been overtaken by events.

“As it stands, there are no campaign finance regulations because they were not passed by the National Assembly,” said committee chairman William Cheptumo.

Source: Daily Nation