In a detailed judgement of the 2022 presidential election petition filed by the Azimio la umoja leader Railla Odinga that was dismissed, the apex court has noted four ideal functioning of the electoral commission that urgent reforms were required. The supreme court has pointed out fundamental flows in the electoral management that require urgent reforms on election technology that sparked disputes of alleged rigging stating of form 34 As and allegations of foreign interference to make its servers full proof to avoid suspicion of external interference.
The apex court has directed the commission to restrict access of servers to their staffs only and have
also called for the delinking of servers supporting elections from that serving the commissions internal administrative work . The commission has been urged to simplify the outlook of the primary form 34 A used to enter presidential results from polling stations by restructuring it to include columns of stray ballot and consider one section for total valid votes. It has also been challenged to put in place measures to allow for special voting as in the petition it was argued that a number of Kenyans more so the IEBC staff had been locked out from exercising their democratic rights given that they were moderating the election exercise.
The parliament has been tasked to come up with legislation and regulatory framework on separate policy to clarify on the roles of commissioners and secretariats likewise to the commission to come up With their guidelines that separates policy ,strategy and oversight responsibility of the chairperson and the commissioners this is after the chairman Wafula Chebukati was accused of allegedly unilaterally conducting the verification and tallying of presidential election excluding the other four commissioners who disowned the declared presidential results.
Therefore the Supreme court has called for legislative and administrative definition of the roles of commissions chairperson, CEO ,IEBC staffs and other third parties this is after Wafula Chebukati was accused of excluding his commissioner in their roles. It has also reinstated the need to extend the 14
day period of hearing and determining a presidential election petition.
Emmaluate Wamalwa
