Kenya's Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) chairman Wafula Chebukati. FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP
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The five commissioners, in a statement, said the memo was not discussed by the Commission Plenary and they came to know about it in the media.
In the 12-point memo, Mr Chebukati raised significant issues about the manner in which the August 8 General Election was conducted.
The leakage of the memo is likely to raise temperatures at the organisation and demonstrates the lack of harmony between the chairman and the chief executive.
Five officials of Kenya's Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) have disowned a memo issued by chairman Wafula Chebukati to its chief executive Ezra Chiloba.
The five commissioners, in a statement, said the memo was not discussed by the Commission Plenary and they came to know about it in the media.
“A quick perusal of the memo shows that the allegations are based on some report or information that has not been brought to the attention of the Commission.
“Most of the issues raised are not factual and could easily mislead if taken out of context. However, the Secretariat is reviewing the issues and will prepare appropriate responses to be presented to the Commission Plenary,” they said.
The five are Vice-Chairperson Consolata Nkatha, Prof Yakub Guliye, Dr Paul Kurgat, Mr Boya Molu, and Mr Margaret Mwachanya.
Dr Roselyne Akombe's name was missing in the statement
However, Dr Kurgat later disowned the statement.
"I spent the whole of this afternoon with Bishop Alfred Rotich, only to find a statement that bears my name. How could I have signed it when I had not even seen it?" Dr Kurgat, the former Kenyan ambassador to Russia, asked.
Dr Kurgat warned that the escalation of the matter, which has now played out in the open, would hurt the commission's credibility.
Significant issues
In the 12-point memo, Mr Chebukati raised significant issues about the manner in which the August 8 General Election was conducted.
It was dated September 5, the same day Mr Chebukati set up a seven-member team to handle the fresh presidential election scheduled for October 17.
It has since emerged that senior officials at the electoral agency had refused to resign over their role in the polls, forcing Mr Chebukati to appoint his own team as the constitutionally mandated Returning Officer for the presidential election.
The leakage of the memo is likely to raise temperatures at the organisation and demonstrates the lack of harmony between the chairman and the chief executive, two crucial cogs in the machinery of one of Kenya’s most watched public institutions.
Mr Chebukati had asked Mr Chiloba about the use of result forms without security features, the purchase of satellite phones that never worked, the creation and use of his account to log onto the elections management system thousands of times and why hundreds of polling stations never sent results of the presidential election.
The three-page memo also contained questions about the use of a “porous file server”, voters who were identified manually, hundreds of polling stations having an equal number of rejected votes and registered voters and why location features on some gadgets were switched from three days to the elections.
