IEBC goes out laughing; prepare to be fooled again

The process of exiting the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission is well underway.

Appallingly, the outgoing Commissioners — and those who negotiated their exit — have seen fit to ensure a payout according to their anticipated terms of office.

Effectively rubbishing all the public interest concerns about their responsibilities, individual and collective, for the management of the 2013 election. The moral of the story?

That people can do whatever they want in public office. It is hard not to despair. Even if the problem is so patently not original or unique.

Take the recent elections in Gabon. A carbon copy of our 2007 elections. An incumbent in a close race with an opposition candidate. All indications of an opposition win.

Results from incumbent strongholds withheld until the very last minute. Those results finally showing improbable voter turnouts, all in favour of the incumbent. A near refusal to use the electoral dispute resolution mechanism to challenge the results. And then, the decision by that mechanism that — gasp — the incumbent did win.

Right.

Or take the recent elections in Zambia. A carbon copy of our 2013 elections — except much more clumsily effected. The (non-)decision by the relevant court as to the meaning of electoral petitions being heard within a certain time-frame. That is, does being heard mean being determined? And then the (non-)decision, with a few, inelegant statements and reversals, as to being out of time to be heard. The incumbent thus — gasp—won.

Right.

Elections as performance. Elections as spectacle. Elections as something we must simply grit our teeth and get through. To continue with the business of incumbents making cash. And repressing their citizenry. Except those on the gravy train of public patronage with them.

And all those dutiful, earnest, well-meaning citizens who stand in line for hours thinking their vote means anything at all? The old saying comes to mind: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

Back to Kenya. Where, actually, are we heading? Why are we about to expend so much energy on a process whose results are foretold? Yes, the situation may be slightly more complicated by the advent of devolution, and a realisation of where new power and new public patronage opportunities lie.

Yes, constraints on campaigning behaviour may be slightly evolved. Incumbents now know, for example, that active incitement to political violence is a no-no. But there are many ways to more indirectly incite primordial passions.

Do any of us actually believe in the notion of political parties that promise use of the state in the public interest? Do any of us still believe that elections matter?

Our elections will be declared “free and fair.” We will protest. Irregularities and malfeasance noted will be determined not to have “substantively affected the expression of the will of the people.” We will either implode. Or put up with it “in the interests of peace.” And usher in the next five years of fascism.

L. Muthoni Wanyeki is Amnesty International’s regional director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes