Chief prosecutor orders Kenya election inquiry

Kenya’s chief prosecutor has directed the department of criminal investigations and the anti-corruption commission to investigate election board officials over possible offences in the invalidated August 8 presidential vote.

Keriako Tobiko, the director of public prosecutions, also asked the two agencies to examine allegations that two senior opposition officials gained illegal access to servers of the election commission as the poll results were being tallied.

The Kenyan supreme court annulled the re-election of president Uhuru Kenyatta on September 1, citing irregularities and illegalities in the transmission of results, and ordered a repeat election within 60 days.

In a detailed ruling last Wednesday, the court said it had not found evidence of individual culpability among election board officials and that the failings were institutional.

But in a letter revealed yesterday, Mr Tobiko said the court not finding individual culpability did not stop him from carrying out an investigation.

Opposition leader Raila Odinga, who petitioned against Mr Kenyatta’s win, said he would not participate in the re-run scheduled for October 26 if officials at the election board were not sacked and prosecuted.

The election board got the backing of Africa’s intergovernmental authority on development. The group, whose observation mission gave last month’s poll a clean bill of health, said it was confident the board could manage a repeat of the election well and warned against attempts to prevent the board from carrying out its mandate.

“Sabotaging IEBC (election board) or boycotting the elections will put Kenya in a constitutional crisis and possibly on a path to unconstitutional change of government,” the authority said.

Mr Tobiko ordered that 11 officials at the board, including its chief executive and a commissioner, be investigated for possible crimes and a report sent to him within 21 days.