Kenya’s IEBC Chairman announced over the weekend that one member of the IEBC technical staff had “gone missing”.  Reports indicated last contacts of 10pm Friday or 3:00am Saturday.  Today we learn that his dismembered body is in the morgue–I have not seen information yet on when he was murdered, when or by whom he was brought to morgue, etc.  (So far these details appear standard for a Nairobi politically related murder.  Normally the cases are unsolved and are subject to features years down the road in the major Kenyan dailies with important details after key suspects have died.)

The extrodinarily last minute testing of the KIEMS (“Kenya Integrated Election Management System”)  — crucial for a credible election because we know that the register has lots of dead voters and other problems –set for 3pm today has been cancelled/postponed due to the fact that the murdered staffer was leading this part of the election.

Meanwhile, the IEBC has announced that more than 20 million paper ballots from its highly controversial sole source contract are arriving.  This allows enough for each of the perhaps 5% dead voters on the register to vote, plus more than an additional 1 million extra ballots.  

Leaked documents publicized by the opposition confirm what seems to be otherwise clear from other official sources — that the KDF is being deployed by the Goverment (the same Secretaries and Ministries involved in the re-election campaign of their Commander-in-Chief per their public communications) for purposes of election security along with the civilian paramilitaries of the Kenya Police Service that were exposed to have been implicated in partisan election activity and in the Post Election Violence in 2007-08.

Parliament has not approved the integration of the KDF into domestic election security.  

We know from the Jubilee (ruling) Party vote to force the IEBC to accept a “manual backup” (substitute) in the event of a failure of the KIEMS that the government would have the votes to have authorized the KDF role had it elected to.  And speaking of that insistence on manual back up . . .

Frankly this stinks.

(UPDATE: Additional details reported by the Standard midday indicate body of Chris Msando in forest by local citizens Sunday evening; they called police Kenya Police Service whose officers took the body to morgue. This is contradictory to some other reports, as usual in cases of murder involving high politics in Kenya. US and UK have offered assistance to investigate what is apparently a clear case of torture and murder.)

(2nd Update: Chris Msando has been variously referred to as “Manager” and as “Acting Director” for the IEBC ICT. The previous ICT director was fired some weeks ago under a cloud. So the person being called a “staff member” in early reports is as a practical matter the most important member of the Commission’s staff other than the chief, Chiloba, who is a holdover from the old Issak Hassan commission.)

(3rd Update: “Uproar over Moses Kuria’s post on slain IEBC officer” has more details and part of the state of play in the campaign pending further information.  

The “simulation” of the KIEMS is re-scheduled now for Wednesday afternoon.)