Letter to IEBC Chairman Isaack Hassan

Mr. Isaack Hassan,

Chairman- Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission,

Republic of Kenya.

Dear Sir,

I must start by congratulating you most sincerely for presiding over the most complex and the largest ever elections in the history of Kenya.

From the outset, we must appreciate that the Commission is supposed to be Independent and to this extent, I want to believe that there were no intimidating forces exerting pressure on you and your Team.

The violence that Kenya witnessed in 2008 were largely due to errors of omission on the side of the then Electoral Commission of Kenya led by the late Samuel Kivuitu- God rest his soul in peace. Kenyans voted in their thousands peacefully just like we did on the 4th March 2013, and the Commission bangled our hopes and aspirations as a people.

I voted at Komarock Primary School on the D-Day and I made several observations which I want to share with you, because, what I saw made me think that you were not prepared for this exercise.

The lines in the school were long and apparently, the IEBC staffers did not know which line led to where. They were of no significant help to the people. I had to line up in three different ques before I decided to find out for myself where the letter T was. Then to my chagrin, I found that several alphabets were split. Like the letter S was split into two. This was very confusing and I want to believe that it was not intentional.
The writer in a Group photo with Chairman Isaack Hassan, the PC Nairobi Mr. Njoroge Ndirangu and the IEBC Commissioners on 13th Dec 2012

The second issue I would want to ask, what became of the voter education? Did the IEBC really invest in voter education, and did the IEBC truly train their clerks to help the Team manage the Elections in an organized and professional manner? And how come we invested Kshs 9billion on gadgets that were designed to fail?

What about the Black Books that seemed not to have the same data with the BVR kits? Then, what happened to the tallying process? This was the simplest thing to do and yet, it seems to be the point where elections are either won or lost in Kenya.

It was amazing that Kenyans came out in their large numbers to elect their next CEO. What was difficult in capturing this data as honestly as they were cast. I am talking about this because after Kenyans had voted, we started seeing provisional results that reflected a huge number of votes being rejected. In fact, it became a public joke that the Rejected Votes were the Third Force in the Elections.

When your team realized this, you came out to tell the public that the high number of rejected votes was due to some bug that was multiplying the entered results by 8. Could this bug also have been able to alter results in favour of any of the Presidential Candidates? I am asking you this because when you started releasing the official results, I was tracking all those results on Excel and at all times, my tallied results which were based on what your Commissioners were reading to us never tallied with what you were posting online.

I found out that there were great anomalies on the posted results with one candidates results going up even with as much as 200,000 votes against the declared results while the other candidates figures went down below what your Commissioners had read. In fact, when your team announced the last batch of 15 Constituencies at around midnight on Friday, I was convinced that no candidate was going to get 50% plus 1. And the country was resigned to going for a Run-off. 

When I went to bed at 1.30am, I was sure of a run off because the 5 Constituencies that were outstanding could not significantly alter the posted results, and your Commissioner even told us to go to bed because the remaining 5 Results were to be announced at 6am when we were all fresh!

Now, I slept for only one hour since I was traveling to Bondo for a funeral and I wanted to leave Nairobi at 4am. I was shocked seeing my TV telling me that we now had a new President! Why did your Commissioner lie to the Nation?

Like Garbage collection, these are weighty issues Sir and we as a Nation must come around and be honest with each other and help clean the mess. Elections must be won in the ballot and not at tallying level and in the Board Rooms.

Your conduct of this process, right from preparations to the elections day to the way you managed the tallying process for so many days to the last minute deceit has placed a heavy yoke on your shoulders. It will permanently make you be part of the history that will define how Kenyans loose elections at the Board Room and not during the balloting process.

Shame on the IEBC Team for throwing the confidence that Kenyans and the whole World had on you. We all know that even Jesus Christ was betrayed by Judas Iscariot on account of 30 pieces of silver. I do not want to believe that this could have been true for us in the year of our Lord 2013.

May the good Lord give you the Grace and Humility to struggle with where you have placed yourself in the history of humanity.

Odhiambo T Oketch,

Executive Director,

The Clean Africa Campaign- TCAC

Nairobi Kenya.

The Clean Africa Campaign is an initiative of KCDN Kenya