Nairobi News

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) chairman, Wafula Chebukati, has fired his personal assistant for allegedly being behind the constant leakage of information emanating from his office.

In the last one month there has been a leakage of two critical memos authored by Chebukati to the CEO Ezra Chiloba seeking answers to the manner the presidential election was conducted, leading to its nullification by the Supreme Court.

There two memos have caused a ruckus at the commission with the Jubilee Party leadership accusing the chairman of playing to the gallery by leaking the memos. The party has asked Chebukati to instead focus on the preparation of the fresh presidential vote on October 26.

Mr Chebukati fired Mr Gekara Muoni on Tuesday last week after his memo to Mr Chiloba demanding the suspension of the ICT director James Muhati, ICT coordinator Paul Mugo and ICT officer Boniface Wamae was leaked the same day.

The sacking of Mr Muoni now brings to three, the number of personal assistants to have been fired by the IEBC chair since February this year.

LEAKED MEMOS

Last week, Chebukati said that he would investigate personnel at the electoral agency behind the leaking of the two memos to the media.

Efforts to get a comment from Chebukati proved futile throughout on Sunday as he neither picked his phone nor responded to the text message left on his number.

The genesis of the ‘memo leaking’ circus is traced to the aftermath of the nullification of presidential results by the Supreme Court on September 1, in which IEBC was adversely mentioned as having committed irregularities and illegalities.

There has been blame game between the secretariat and the commission, with Chebukati demanding answers from Chiloba on what might have led to the bungled elections.

The first one was on September 7, in which the chair directed Mr Chiloba to explain why some election result forms lacked security features, explain the purchase of satellite phones that never worked and why hundreds of polling stations did not send results of the presidential election to the national tallying centre.

MASSIVE FALLOUT

He also demanded an explanation on how an account created in his name was used to log into the elections management system thousands of times.

The fallout from the leaked memo was massive leading to a team building retreat for IEBC officials at the Great Rift Valley Lodge in Naivasha on September 11, to mend the sharp divisions that had started emerging between the commissioners.

After a meeting that lasted for more than 10 hours, a truce was finally reached with the aid of Bishop Alfred Rotich of the Catholic Military Ordinariate where it was agreed that Chiloba would lead the team to manage the fresh presidential election.

The entire IEBC team was finally back together, but not for long before another memo got its way to the public.

In the memo leaked on Tuesday last week, Mr Chebukati stated that the move to suspend the ICT staff is aimed at restoring public confidence as the commission prepares itself to conduct the repeat of the presidential election.

The chair also demand that the officers in the ICT directorate be immediately suspended in accordance with the enabling laws and IEBC’s HR and administration manual to facilitate full and proper investigations.

In a bid to prevent a similar fallout, the commission, through a tweet on its Twitter handle, said the leaked memo was still under discussion and no final decision has been taken on the issues.