Kenyan poll commissioner steps down after ‘political bias’

ONE of Kenya’s top election officials quit yesterday in a searing statement accusing her colleagues of political bias and saying an upcoming presidential election could not be credible.

The resignation of one of seven poll commissioners is the latest dramatic twist to an election process that has plunged the East African nation into its worst political crisis in a decade.

“The commission in its current state can surely not guarantee a credible election on 26 October 2017. I do not want to be party to such a mockery to electoral int Roselyn Akombe wrote in the statement from New York.

The country’s Supreme Court on September 1 ordered the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to carry out a re-run of the presidential election, after annulling the vote due to “irregularities” and mismanagement by officials.

Divisions in the commission burst into the open days later when a letter was leaked from the panel’s chairman to its CEO questioning a host of failings in the conduct of the August 8 poll.

Akombe said that she had questioned her role at the commission for many months, but had “soldiered on”.

“Sometimes, you walk away, especially when potentially lives are at stake. The commission has become a party to the current crisis. The commission is under siege,” she wrote.

In an interview with the BBC she said she feared for her life and would not return to her home country in the foreseeable future.

In her statement Akombe said field staff in recent days expressed concerns about their safety, especially in areas hit by opposition protests against the IEBC.

She accused her colleagues of seeking “to have an election even if it is at the cost of the lives of our staff and voters”.

She said the election could not be credible when staff were getting last minute instructions on changes to technology and the electronic transmission of results, and when training was being rushed for fear of attacks from protesters.

She said the election panel and its staff were also being “intimidated by political actors”. — AFP