The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has reassured William Ruto’s camp that it is ready to effectively conduct the August 9, General Election.
Speaking on Wednesday, February 16, during a Kenya Editors Guild (KEG) national dialogue breakfast meeting in Nairobi IEBC Acting Director Voter Education, Partnerships and Communication Joyce Ekuam allayed fears that the commission is ill-prepared to conduct a free and fair election.
“We as an election management body in Kenya is ready to conduct elections on August 9, 2022. Our state of preparedness is strongly backed by a comprehensive legal framework for elections in this country,” Ekuam said as quoted by the Standard.
She said the commission is working to ensure that it fills all the vacant positions in all the 290 constituencies and that they are currently training election coordinators to ensure the election process is a success.
“We have the 290 constituency election coordinators, who will be returning officers. There is also a lot of training and capacity building as far as preparations are concerned,” she assured.
This comes just a day after Deputy President William Ruto’s camp expressed fear that the IEBC is not ready to effectively handle the August 9, General Election.
Kericho Senator Aaron Cheruiyot, a fierce supporter of William Ruto on Tuesday, February 15, wondered why IEBC doesn’t have a substantive Chief Executive Officer a few months to the election.
“The secretariat, which is the main workhouse in terms of the election management process, is not firmly fixed. Even now, 4 months to the General Election, IEBC doesn’t have a substantive CEO,” Cheruiyot said.
Cheruiyot who was speaking to KTN News further castigated the newly appointed commissioners saying they should have seen the necessity to employ key staff members immediately after they were sworn in.
“Even if you are a genius of what magnitude to be given an assignment in a new posting and expect that within three to four months you would run a national exercise that involves nearly 100 thousand officers out deployed with work station of almost 40 thousand, that is not a simple exercise even the military will struggle,” Kericho senator said.