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KENYA: STARK MADNESS

From: Judy Miriga

Folks,

Stark madness of IEBC /chairman Issac Hassan by Miguna Miguna, well said, and this I agree it is timely and well put statement. BUT, where is this Issac Hassan spreaking from??? Is he in the Country or outside the country........something does not seem right here.......if it is without, why would he be speaking from without and not within....??? Why is this part left a loof not saying anything about it and is not clarified by the authrotities ...............

Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson
Executive Director
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc.,
USA

http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com

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STARK MADNESS
March 20, 2013
[image]

http://www.kenya-today.com/opinion/stark-madness

March 20, 2013|Posted in: Opinion
By: Obilo Kobilo

Something happened this week which interests me so much to being tickled. Someone opened up and glared through the lenses of the camera to pour venoms on the character and personality of one of the presidential candidate striking jarring echoes from the outburst of one senior counsel James Orengo regarding the moribund IEBC.

Yes Isaac Hassan,the gold medal for linguistic and logical incoherence winner according to Miguna Miguna, filed his response regarding the petition challenging the son of Jomo from assuming the presidency.

His defense revolved around the issue of Raila not conceding defeat in any election tracing the behavior from 1997 General Election. He triggered this with a murderous rage challenging the Supreme Court to ignore the petition since according to him it lacked ground meriting presidential electoral malpractice.

I do not wish to give his assertions currency beyond their nuisance logical and legal proof but rather dissect the circumstances leading to filling the petition of which was born immediately the “doctored election results” were announced.

Anybody talking about elections held during Moi’s era as being free and fair and did not merit being contested is seriously abrogating our intellectual recollection of an era characterized by wobbly leadership perpetuated with feudal state under one monolith that ensured that leadership did no evolve.

In 2002, Raila who never concedes defeat according to the incoherent IEBC boss, bolt from the blue and surprised many with his KIBAKI TOSHA declaration.

In 2007, the circumstances that graced the declaration of Kibaki as the third President of this Republic were disputed by even the International observers including the ECK Chairman who later confessed to have not known who won fairly.

So Mr. Chairman, did you expect Raila to concede defeats in an election where even the Chairman of the body mandated to oversee the process is lost as to who is actually the winner?

You only opt for character assassination and terrorize the other side into submission through emotional loaded verbatim when you are in an undercover mission.

John Lily pictured this scenario when he laments that he that closet his honesty has nothing else to lose including a court petition. Isaak Hassan the de facto declarer of disputed election results has nothing else to lose…credibility is gone, honesty had been sold, trustworthiness never existed in his mainstream channel of values.

To hem and haw on appeals and other imprecise legalisms only affirms the wretched foundation of philosophy that drives people like Isaak Hassan who have been mandated with the pertinent constitutional obligations that draw the life and death line of our constitution.

To me, Hassan’s response should be best treated as a mediocre era of aberration to shift attention to real issues which require response like what led to the collapse of electronic voter tallying. Under whose instructions was the number of rejected votes being multiplied at the national tallying center?

Land reforms team faces new hurdles

[image]National Land Commission chairman Mohammed Swazuri. Photo/FILE NATION

By JOHN NGIRACHU jngirachu@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted Sunday, March 24 2013 at 00:30

In Summary

Commission has come up against bureaucratic and financial hurdles

Activists fear the nine-member commission may be hamstrung as it gets off to a rocky start

After three quiet weeks in office, the National Land Commission came out last week to declare that it is ready to pursue its daunting mandate and meet the public’s high expectations.

But even as it gets down to work, the commission has come up against bureaucratic and financial barriers.

Chairman Muhammad Swazuri told journalists the nine-member team has been allocated Sh120 million for the four months to the end of the financial year.

While that is sufficient for that short period, the commission is apprehensive about what allocation it would get in the next financial year given that it was established towards the end of the budget preparation process.

While observers and land reform activists have been keen to have the commission to start working, its late creation, under pressure from the courts, has created anxiety about whether it will be given the space and cooperation to accomplish its mandate.

Mr Odenda Lumumba, who heads the Kenya Land Alliance, told the Sunday Nation that the commission would have to be accommodated within the Medium-Term Framework in the Treasury for it to get money.

He is among those who want the commission to receive a substantial budgetary allocation.

“My position has always been that in order to roll out any serious reform in an African perspective, you need no less than between 10 to 15 per cent of the national budget,” he said.

Mr Swazuri, the chairman, said they would be happy to get 20 per cent of the Budget but appeared to acknowledge it would be unrealistic to expect that much.

It will be interesting to see how the next government handles the commission given it clearly had little goodwill from the Kibaki administration. The President was compelled by a court order to gazette it.

“I think within the last government, definitely there was no political goodwill because they really dilly-dallied with its appointment,” Mr Lumumba.

He said from the presidential debates, none of the candidates has a comprehensive formula on how they would address historical land injustices and reform in the land sector.

Mr Uhuru Kenyatta’s Jubilee coalition included radical ideas about land in its manifesto. The most ambitious was the promise to have those who live on community land given title deeds.

Jubilee proposes to “give communities, rather than the National Land Commission, the titles to community-held lands”.

Land reforms would go beyond giving people titles, and the adjudication of community land is likely to generate disputes over ownership.

If the commission and the government of the day are not in agreement, said Mr Lumumba, the commission will suffer as it would simply be starved of the resources it needs to be effective.

Mr Ibrahim Mwathane, who heads the Kenya Land Governance Institute, told the Sunday Nation that “the season is not opportune for any serious discussion about the commission’s mandate”.

With the Executive in limbo because of the delayed transition because of a petition against Mr Kenyatta’s election, ministries have slowed down work as technocrats run the show.

When it gets working, the commission’s first task will be the recruitment of a secretary who will be its accounting officer and the head of its secretariat. It has advertised the position.

On Wednesday, Mr Swazuri said they would vet the Lands ministry staff who will be seconded to work with it.

Once the 47 governors are sworn in this week, the commission will help set up county land management boards to receive complaints from Kenyans.

Mr Swazuri said the commission is preparing regulations on how the boards will operate.

It has in the meantime received a variety of complaints, said Mr Swazuri, from institutions and individuals, and these range from boundary disputes to encroachment, double allocations, land grabbing and land degradation.

The commission has no offices and has been operating from the Lands ministry headquarters at Ardhi House, Nairobi.

As an independent body, operating from Ardhi House is likely to create the wrong impression.

Second attempt

The establishment of the commission marks the second time Kenya is making an attempt to tackle the sensitive land question.

The first attempt after President Moi left office in 2002 was a spectacular failure. When it took power in 2003, President Kibaki’s Narc government seemed keen to tackle land issues and appointed a commission headed by lawyer Paul Ndung’u to look at irregular land deals.

With its recommendations to revoke irregular allocations, the Ndung’u report, however, proved too politically expensive to implement and has been gathering dust for the past seven years.

Minutes reveal how IEBC bought faulty gadgets

GLANCE FACTS

Face Technology provided a proto-type device, which lacked a spare power back-up for 12 hours

Updated Sunday, March 24 2013 at 00:00 GMT+3

[image]Voters in a queue at Kasarani to cast their votes in the March 4 General Election. The
presidential election has faced court challenge from CORD pact. [PHOTO: FILE/STANDARD]

By Moses Michira and Paul Wafula
NAIROBI, KENYA: The electoral commission, which conducted the March 4 General Election, bought faulty voter identification gadgets without testing their technical capability.

Face Technology, the South African firm that supplied the equipment also known as poll books, won the tender before a technical evaluation was conducted among the five prequalified bidders.

A review of the tendering procedure by the public procurement regulator found out the tender to supply poll books was awarded to the South African firm, which participated in the Anglo Leasing scandal, on September 29 last year, three weeks before the technical evaluation among the shortlisted bidders.

This major procurement breach ensured firms that were to later demonstrate their capabilities for the task, like America’s Avante and France’s Safran Morpho were left out.

The public procurement regulator, however, found out IEBC had actually made its decision to award the tender to Face Technology more than three weeks before the October 22 demonstration of technical capabilities.

Minutes from the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC and presented by Avante to the regulator indicated that the tender was actually awarded on September 29.

“…bidder number 3 M/S Face Technology be considered for the award of the contract at a total cost of Sh1.397724925 ($16651139.13),” reads part of the official information from IEBC’s September 29 meeting.

The regulator says since a decision had been made, the exercise of proof of concept was meaningless because Face Technology, whose devise had failed, had been shockingly declared the winner. The revelation now provides the critical answers to the billion-dollar question, what exactly went wrong in the voter identification during the last General Election conducted by IEBC Chairman Issack Hassan?

The public procurement regulator fell short of cancelling IEBC’s tender, only allowing it to proceed in the greater public interest considering the time left, on its December 3, last year, terse ruling. IEBC’s defence was that Face Technology had the lowest quote at Sh1.39 billion disregarding its inability to produce the required equipment, compared to Safran Morpho’s Sh1.6 billion and Avante’s Sh2.1 billion.

Questionable tendering

Hassan’s motivation in awarding the tender to Face Technology was questioned by the regulator who established an uneven playing ground in the procurement process. Face Technology had presented a prototype that never worked at the tendering stage, but the IEBC inexplicably offered the firm another chance to demonstrate its technical capability.

A meeting between IEBC and the three prequalified bidders held on October 10, last year indicated Safran Morpho declined to parade its prototype, while Face Technology’s equipment fell short of the requirements in the tender document.

“(Avante’s prototype) can satisfactorily meet the specifications provided in the tender document for voter identification device,” further reads the report. “( Face Technology) did not demonstrate a prototype that met the proof of concept requirements as stipulated in the tender document.”

IEBC invited Face Technology and Safran Morpho in a subsequent demonstration, leaving out Avante, which had demonstrated its technical capacity, in a meeting held on October 22. Minutes of the meeting show Face Technology presented a different device from that submitted during the close of the tender, a major procurement breach, which the IEBC turned a blind eye to.

During the evaluation, Face Technology provided a prototype device, which lacked a spare power back-up of 12 hours that was marked as critical. It also did not have an original battery attached to the laptops that would last for 12hours.

The device it supplied at this stage did not meet the requirement that its start-up and recovery time would last less than 30 seconds. This means the prototype of Face Technology was taking longer to start than required. None of the companies that qualified for the second round of evaluation also provided gadgets that had unique identification numbers assigned by the manufacturers. Lack of this detail exposes the gadgets to difficulties in tracing the user and location in case they are used to hack into the system. The Board accuses the IEBC of being cosy with Face Technology and finding small excuses with the other companies to disqualify them.

“It (IEBC) appears to have adopted in the processing of this tender, a scheme of nit-picking, when it came to the tenders of the bidders it did not favour, and one of cosiness when it came with the successful bidder (Face Technologies),” a report, critical of the process, reads in part.

The revelations come at a time when it emerged the electronic voting and transmission system could have been attacked at least twice before it finally crashed at 8pm on Election Day.

IEBC: Why Raila poll petition is flawed

GLANCE FACTS

Election body’s defence

CORD using incorrect provisional figures to challenge voter register accuracy

Technology meant for transparency, not to substitute manual process required by law

Forms 36 (constituency totals) not manipulated, contain no grave errors

Voter identification, results transmission systems not ‘designed to fail’, not ‘abandoned’

Supreme Court has no jurisdiction to set aside entire election as CORD wants

Updated Saturday, March 23 2013 at 09:06 GMT+3

[image]More than 10 million Kenyans turned up to vote in the March 4 General Election.
[PHOTO: FILE/STANDARD]

By Wahome Thuku
NAIROBI; KENYA: Electoral officials have provided a blow-by-blow account of the March 4 presidential election in response to petitions claiming massive fraud.

This follows a separate filing to the Supreme Court earlier this week by the chairman of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission in his capacity as Returning Officer in the presidential election.

They dismiss allegations of irregularities and say IEBC declared Jubilee alliance candidate Uhuru Kenyatta as President-elect “properly and constitutionally”. IEBC says the petition filed on behalf of CORD’s candidate, Raila Odinga, challenging the outcome of the elections is riddled with “misrepresentations” and “misconceptions” about the voters’ register, the tallying process and the legal framework guiding the election.

The 26-page response urges the Supreme Court to reject all petitions challenging the outcome arguing:

• CORD’s challenge over the accuracy of the final voter register is based on incorrect provisional figures;

• Some of the alleged discrepancies are merely related to special sections that all parties were aware of;

• The electronic voter identification and results transmission were meant for transparency only, not to substitute manual process required by law;

• The unexpected and unplanned failure of the two electronic systems had no bearing on the final outcome;

• Details on Forms 36 (constituency totals) used in the manual tally were not manipulated and contain no grave errors as alleged;

• None of the 291 constituencies reported had vote totals greater than the number of registered voters.

The electoral body’s legal team, however, conceded the poll had numerous challenges and said this was due to the tight timelines they were forced to work under.

IEBC informed the court it had been in existence for just 18 months, during which time it “completed activities that require an election cycle of five years”. The team also pointed out that the March 4 election was Kenya’s largest and most complex ever, with an 86 per cent turnout that presented logistical issues.

“The election required the hiring, training, deployment and supervision of over 300,000 temporary personnel in addition to IEBC staff, and acquisition of unparalleled quantities of equipment,” their response reads.

The challenges encountered, electoral officials say, were resolved with pragmatic solutions in accordance with the law. Political party officials, they add, agreed to many of the solutions, including the manual tallying after the provisional results system ran into trouble.

As a result, they say, there are no grounds for setting aside the outcome of the election. They further contend the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction for such a drastic course of action.

Through campaign manager Eliud Owalo, Raila has sought declarations that, when broadly interpreted, would lead to invalidation of the entire General Election. He claims he won the elections but the victory was stolen from him. He wants voter registration declared flawed, the presidential elections invalidated and IEBC held to have committed electoral offences.

“There is no lawful basis whatsoever advanced by the petitioner that would warrant either the setting aside the results as announced or (rejecting) the electoral process as a whole,” IEBC responds through lawyers Mohamed Nyaoga and Paul Nyamodi. The commission also dismisses Raila’s references to the disputed 2007 election in his petition, saying the facts and legal framework are different.

“The only common denominator is the petitioner, who has disputed both results,” IEBC says. Initial reports by various observers, it adds, gave this year’s polls a clean bill of health.

CORD’s allegations

IEBC denies CORD’s allegations that it “abandoned” the voter identification process or that the system was “poorly selected, implemented and designed to fail”. Details on the failure of electronic systems, IEBC says, are provided in an affidavit prepared by Mr Dismas Ong’ondi, its Director of Information Technology. These systems, it adds, were only employed to improve the efficiency and transparency of the electoral process.

The commission maintains it certified 14,352,545 validly registered voters on February 18. This followed countrywide registration from November 17 to December 18 last year.

IEBC says an additional Special Register had 31,318 people who were validly registered but did not have their biometric details captured due to age, disability or the nature of their work. Political parties were informed about this group in a section called Register Without Biometrics, which was gazetted alongside the main one on February 18.

The figure of 14,267,572 voters quoted in the petition, it says, was a provisional figure from an early register given to political parties to help them conduct their nominations. The final register opened to the public for inspection and verification between January 14 and 27 this year included adjustments that add up to the final figure. Two other sections on the register — exceptions and duplications — were not used during the poll.

On tallying, IEBC says it had a two-step audit involving ten regional teams and a verification team to countercheck their findings. Returning Officers from all 291 constituencies (including the Diaspora) were required to personally and physically deliver results at the National Tallying Centre. Signed Forms 36 were given to party agents in the boardroom at Bomas who were allowed 20 minutes to countercheck them with their tallies.

The commission denies any irregularities or malpractices in the tallying process.

“There was no manipulation of Forms 36 or (of) the results declared,” IEBC says. “There was no declaration of results that were in excess of registered voters in any polling station. The sovereign will of the people of Kenya was respected and upheld in accordance with the constitution.”

Three petitions have been filed before the Supreme Court over the outcome of the presidential election. One seeks a ruling on the use of rejected votes in computing whether any candidate met the constitutional thresholds for a first round victory (at least 50-per-cent-plus-one-vote and 25 per cent of the vote in half of all counties). It was filed by Moses Kuria and another. The other two challenge the election based on various alleged irregularities in the registration, voting or tallying processes. They were separately filed by Raila’s chief campaigner Eliud Owalo and by civil society’s Gladwell Otieno and another. The Supreme Court plans to hold a pre-trial conference on issues raised in the three petitions and has until the end of the month to give its ruling. It’s decision is final.

Uhuru was declared winner with 6,173,433 valid votes (50.07 per cent of the total votes cast, including rejected votes).