Three Kenyan commissioners have resigned, citing "arbitrary decision making" by the electoral body's leadership. The electoral commission has been plagued by issues since a botched presidential election in 2017.
Image: picture alliance/dpa/K. Dhanji
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Three Kenyan commissioners on Monday announced their resignation, deepening a crisis at the country's electoral commission after a botched presidential election last year.
The commissioners said they decided to step down after Ezra Chiloba, chief executive of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), was suspended pending an audit on procurement matters.
They claimed that IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati had pushed forward with a vote on the matter despite not having a quorum since not all six commissioners were present.
"The challenges of the 2017 elections call for the commission to self-reflect and to institutionalize best practices. However, the institution has continued to be dysfunctional with arbitrary decision making and leaking of internal documents," the resigning commissioners said in a statement.
President Uhuru Kenyatta won last year's second presidential election practically unopposedImage: Reuters/B. Ratner
'On course'
But chairman Chebukati hit back on Twitter, saying "operations are on course" at the commission despite the resignations.
"The Commission assures the public that despite the resignation by three Commissioners, its operation are on course and remains focused on delivering on its constitutional mandate," IEBC said in a statement on Twitter.
Unrest over
Last year, Kenya's Supreme Court invalidated a presidential election, citing electoral irregularities. In the second presidential election of that year, then-incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta won, partly due to a boycott by the opposition.
The electoral process triggered unrest across the country, but did not mark a repeat of violence seen in the wake of the 2007 election, which left more than 1,200 people.
Last month, Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga shook hands together in what was dubbed a new beginning between the rival politicians. But the IEBC has yet to put the election behind them, with lawmakers calling for the entire commission to resign or face individual probes.
How events unfolded in the Kenyan election
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta has begun his second term in office. Here's how the tumultuous events developed since the election campaign in August.
Image: Reuters/B. Ratner
A tight race
Elections on August 8, 2017 were expected to be a neck- and-neck affair between incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta and his rival Raila Odinga.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/J. Delay
Unrest ahead
A week ahead of the hotly contested vote, Christopher Musando, IT department chief of Kenya's Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), was found dead. He was one of the few people with key information about the election management system. IEBC servers were supposedly breached in the 2013 polls.
Image: picture-alliance/AP
Marred by violence
The violence many Kenyans had feared and anticipated erupted just a few hours after the election results, handing victory to the incumbent, started to trickle in. Dozens of people were killed, mostly in the opposition strongholds. Refusing to accept the outcome of the poll, Raila Odinga turned to the Supreme Court.
Image: Reuters/G. Tomasevic
Anticipating results
The election was free and fair, international observers said, despite opposition allegations of rigging and hacked servers. Former US Secretary of State John Kerry, who headed a group of election observers from the Carter Center, also endorsed the vote.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/T. Karumba
Irregular, illegal
To no avail, however as on September 1, Kenya’s Supreme Court declared the vote neither "transparent nor verifiable" and nullified the August 8 presidential elections, in which the IEBC had declared President Uhuru Kenyatta the winner with more than 54 percent of vote. The court called for new elections within 60 days.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/B. curtis
Kenyatta - livid, stung
A disappointed Uhuru Kenyatta, who had already received hundreds of congratulatory messages, called the Supreme Court judges 'crooks.' The Chief Justice emerged an African hero for taking a firm decision to annul the results that were in favor of the incumbent president.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/Kenya TV
In the interest of a 'credible' vote
Kenyatta's rival Raila Odinga pulled out of the re-run of the presidential election scheduled for late October. Odinga said he wanted to allow for the electoral commission to make fundamental reforms that would deliver a "credible election."
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/D. Bandic
Business boycott
The opposition boycott targeted giants in the telecommunications industry and companies that deal in dairy products, cooking fats and oils. Raila Odinga took the lead, publicly migrating from the Safaricom phone network, whose client he had been for the last ten years, to a new provider called airtel.
Image: Reuters/B. Ratner
Challenge dismissed
In November, Kenya’s Supreme Court upheld President Kenyatta's victory in the controversial October re-run, which he had won with 98 percent of the vote on a turnout of 39 percent. The court dismissed two petitions that argued the second poll had not been conducted according to law.
Image: Reuters/B. Ratner
Two titans
Kenya, where politics have been characterized by ethnic tensions since independence in 1963, is deeply split along an ethnic divide that has triggered a debate on splitting the country into two. It’s now up to the two political heavyweights, Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga, (flanked above by the Archbishop of Canterbury) to bring the country back to normalcy.
