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Kenya polls team rules out quick by-elections
- Details
- Published on Sunday, 24 May 2009 04:31
Speaking as his team officially started work, IIEC chairman Issack Hassan said that they would use the three-month period after the Speaker issues writs for the two constituencies to prepare.“I don’t expect us to conduct the by-elections immediately. We will conduct voter registration in the two constituencies and employ new staff,” Mr Hassan said.
The Bomachoge seat became vacant when Mr Joel Onyancha Omagwa lost an election petition against him last December. Shinyalu MP Charles Lugano died last week.
The IIEC, which officially took over the assets and liabilities of the defunct Electoral Commission of Kenya, already has on its plate a debt of Sh166 million. The IIEC owes the former ECK staff a send-off package of Sh152 million and its landlord Sh14.6 million in rent arrears.
While handing over to Mr Hassan, the chairman of the electoral body’s transition committee, Mr David Mutemi, said that although his team had prepared the payment vouchers for the former staff, the Treasury was yet to release the money.
The rent for the six floors at Anniversary Towers in Nairobi had not been paid since December, when the ECK was disbanded.
Modern system
“We have recommended in our handing over notes that the Public Service Commission should as a matter of urgency second staff to the IIEC to form an interim secretariat before it recruits its own,” said Mr Mutemi.
The ECK was said, in the Kriegler Report, to be lacking independence and capacity because of weaknesses in its organisational structure, composition and management systems. Before the end of its tenure in May 2010, the IIEC should have developed a modern system for collecting, transmitting and tallying poll data.
