Azimio La Umoja One Kenya coalition party presidential candidate Raila Odinga now says that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) chairperson Wafula Chebukati has ignored his letters.
Through his legal chief advisor Paul Mwangi, the former Prime Minister has raised concerns over Chebukati's refusal to address the gaps in the preparation for the August 9 polls.
Raila through his demand letter sent to the electoral commission on Monday, July 4, decried the chairperson's failure to respond to his letter dated June 27 where he was seeking a list of all polling stations together with their geo-reference, information on Kenya Integrated Election Management System (KIEMS) kits, training of election officials, election management and measures taken against IEBC officials implicated in the illegal transfer of voters.
In addition to the lists, Raila has also demanded a bilateral consultative meeting with the commission within seven days to iron out some of the issues raised by his team.
Azimio has also asked Chebukati to make arrangements for the team to take a tour of the Inform Lykos printing press in Athens, Greece where ballot papers are set to be printed to ensure transparency in that process.
In addition, Raila also wants his technical team accorded an opportunity to inspect the processed of preparing the KIEMS kits, in conjunction with IEBC’s technical team alongside those of Smartmatic International, the company that was contracted to supply election technology.
Raila is further pushing the IEBC to find a complementary mechanism for the identification of voters. Azimio has maintained that the commission must provide a manual voter register for all the polling stations in the country on the voting day.
"What concerns us is not that we insist you don’t use technology, yes use technology, use all the systems that have been described, whether you use them or not, but the law requires that you have them…" Mwangi stated.
The use of technology has been embraced by Kenya Kwanza Alliance led by Deputy President William Ruto. While meeting the commission, Ruto's team noted that they are ready to embrace the use of technology fully if reliability will be guaranteed during the process.
"There have been reports that Kenya Kwanza wants a manual register. We don't want a manual register. If you give us sufficient safeguards that an electronic one will function without any chance of failure then we are good," Ruto stated.
The DP argued that the use of technology is one way of embracing digital democracy in the country.
IEBC on the other side maintained that the use of technology will be efficient especially in taming election malpractice.
"The system will automatically sound an alarm. The system will also maintain account and tally of those who have voted," IEBC CEO Hussein Marjan remarked.
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