Category Archives: Kenya

As preparations for Kenya’s elections lag once again, cut the fog of time and remember what happened in 2007

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Polling Station Olympic School Kibera

Flashback to the night of Kibaki’s twilight swearing in . . .

“Kenya could be facing its greatest crisis”, The Telegraph

By Adrian Blomfield

Analysis

Five years ago yesterday, close to a million people watched as Mwai Kibaki was inaugurated as President of Kenya in Nairobi’s Uhuru Park.

Daniel Arap Moi, the authoritarian strongman who had ruled for a quarter of a century, was gone, his hand-picked successor roundly defeated.

A nation rejoiced. Already one of Africa’s most stable countries, Kenya could also now claim to be among its most democratic.

Last night, Mr Kibaki was hurriedly sworn in before a few hundred loyalists at a tawdry ceremony held in the gardens of the official presidential residence.

The contrast could not have been more stark.

As he lumbered towards the podium, Kenya’s cities and towns were erupting in chaos and ethnically motivated bloodshed, a predictable response after the most dubious election since the one-party era ended in 1992.

It is no exaggeration to say that Kenya is potentially facing its most serious crisis since gaining independence from Britain in 1963.

The prospect for serious violence between the country’s two most traditionally antagonistic tribes, Mr Kibaki’s Kikuyu and the Luo, led by his challenger Raila Odinga, is worryingly high.

Luos, marginalised since independence, have reason to feel aggrieved. Thanks to an alliance that Mr Odinga built with other tribes, they felt that this was their best and possibly last chance of taking power.

The farcical nature of the vote will only heighten their disappointment. The electoral commission initially claimed that roughly a quarter of returning officers disappeared for 36 hours without announcing results and had switched off their mobile phones.

When results did finally emerge, Mr Odinga saw a one million vote lead overturned.

Opinion polls showed that the contest was always going to be close, but if the official results are correct, Kenyans voted in an inexplicably bizarre manner.

After turfing out 20 of Mr Kibaki’s cabinet ministers and reducing his party to a rump in the simultaneous parliamentary poll, they apparently voted in an entirely different manner in the presidential race.

Apart from an unusually high turn-out in some of Mr Kibaki’s strongholds (sometimes more than 100 per cent ), the president then appeared to have won many more votes in some constituencies than first reported.

If it all seems depressingly familiar, it need not have been.

Mr Kibaki had lost a lot of the enormous goodwill that he enjoyed following the 2002 election after a cabal of Kikuyu cronies was accused of corruption. He also reneged on a promise to introduce a new constitution that would have returned many of his overarching powers to parliament.

On the other hand, he allowed a free press to thrive and respected the results of a 2005 referendum that went against him. Many expected he would do the same if he lost last Thursday’s election.

Instead of setting an example to the rest of the continent, Mr Kibaki’s opponents say that he has joined the unholy pantheon of African presidents who have refused to surrender power.

If he has chosen instead to squander his country’s stability and its fragile ethnic harmony it is a tragedy not just for Kenya but for all of Africa.

To be clear, State Department records show Department did flatly misrepresent the Kenya Exit Poll in 2008 to avoid pressure to release it

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From a 2017 release in response to my 2009 Freedom of Information Act request on the Exit Poll showing an Opposition win in Kenya’s 2007 Presidential election:

R 170924Z APR 07
FM AMEMBASSY NAIROBI
TO SECSTATE WASHDC 9024

FOR AF/E AND INR/AA

SUBJECT: ACHIEVING USG GOALS IN KENYA’S ELECTION

12. (U) Ongoing Assistance: USAID/Kenya has ongoing support
in the areas of electoral administration, public opinion
polling and political party strengthening. Program
activities include the following:

. . .

–– Public Opinion Polling: The International Republican
Institute began implementing a public opinion program in
2005. The program seeks to achieve two results: increasing
the availability of objective and reliable polling data; and
providing an independent source of verification of electoral
outcomes via exit polls. These results make an important
contribution to elections and political processes. First,
genuine free and fair elections require that citizens make
informed choices. The polling data adds to the objective data
available to citizens on key electoral issues. Second, the
exit polls provide an independent assessment of the accuracy
of the official electoral results, thereby supporting the
assessment of the credibility of Kenyan electoral processes.
This program also enhances democratic political parties by
enhancing the likelihood that candidates base their platforms
on the key issues and concerns of their constituents,
evidenced in the polling data, rather than the traditional
focus on ethnicity and personalized political wrangling.

Read the whole April 2007 Ranneberger cable at the State Department FOIA site.

Yet, after the election, the State Department developed “talking points to deal with press questions if they came” that told a contradictory story, that the exit poll was a “training exercise” rather than an “independent verification of outcomes” and “assessment of credibility of the Kenyan electoral process”:

IRI Exit poll Q&A

Q — Why isn’t the Embassy pressuring to release its exit poll conducted in conjunction with the December general elections?

 

A — As explained on their website, IRI did not conduct the Opinion poll themselves and have real concerns over its validity. Moreover, the poll was conducted as a capacity building or training exercise. We should not Pressure’ firms to bring a product to market that they don’t believe in, whether it is a defective automobile, or a defective opinion poll.

 

Q — Strategic Public Relations ind Research Limited (SPRR), the firm IRI contracted to Conduct the poll, stands by their results and refutes IRI’s statement.
They said they were “shocked and disappointed” at IRI’s decision. What is your reaction to that?

 

A —This is a highly technical dispute between private parties over raw data that no one
else has even seen. We understand that IRI is examining the disputed data to see if any of it is usable, which sound’s reasonable under the circumstances.

 

Q — In his recent testimony before Congress and in an editorial that he co-wrote, Maina Kiai, Chairperson of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights,
urged Congress to pressure IRI to release the exit poll. In the op-ed, he said it was important to release the exit poll because there are “Suspicions that the institute has
suppressed its results not because they were flawed but because they showed that Mr. Odinga won.” These suspicions, he said, have fueled mistrust. What is your
position?

 

A — Again, we should not pressure IRI to release information gathered in a training 
exercise, especially when they lack confidence in its validity.

Additional “AF (Africa Bureau) Press Guidance” with the same misrepresentations were issued on July 9, 2008 after the Exit Poll was finally released in Washington by the University of California, San Diego researchers and it was covered in the McClatchy newspapers.

For further discussion, see “Should there by an international Code of Conduct for Exit Polls and Parallel Vote Tabulations?“:

. . . .

The US Government ultimately had rights to our data as a matter of government contracts law and USAID had arguably and ambiguously constrained our ability to release the Exit Poll results to the public in the Amendment to the Cooperative Agreement funding the Exit Poll by providing for “consultation” with the Embassy on “diplomatic or other” considerations. The Cooperative Agreement for the Program was neither classified nor available publicly until I had it released under the Freedom of Information Act years later. The Exit Poll from the 2005 Referendum had been released.

 

Fortunately we have not seen another disaster quite like Kenya 2007-08, but the questions about transparency and release and reporting of information from election verification and anti-fraud tools are still there. For instance in the most recent elections in the DRC and Malawi, as well as the controversy in Kenya in 2013. This could be addressed by pre-established standards or codes if donors, host governments and democracy assistance organizations or implementers are willing to give up some of their case-by-case flexibility and frankly some of the power of controlling information.

 

“You are doing a heck of a job”; Biden and Kenyatta get cozy at White House

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Remarks by President Biden and President Kenyatta of the Republic of Kenya Before Bilateral Meeting

President Biden and President Kenyatta had an apparently cozy visit at the White House. Biden got to host an African head of state after neglecting to do so around the UN General Assembly. Kenyatta got to “bring home” news of a U.S. vaccine donation, personal praise from Biden and a mutual reiteration about how well the Governments of our two countries do on cooperating on terrorism, business and generally on being “partners”. See the account from Kenya’s state media, KBC.

A good way to end the week for Client 13173 of Geneva’s Union Bancaire Privée (see “Secret Assets Exposed by Pandora Papers Expose Uhuru Kenyatta’s Family“, by Will Fitzgibbon in The Elephant, Oct 8).

I do not think it unfair to read the tea leaves from this action by the Biden Administration–on the heels of announcing the appointment of Judd Devermont, late of the Center for Strategic and Studies, to formulate a new Africa policy (as John Bolton in the Trump Administration)–toward deciphering how the U.S. executive branch can be expected to play Kenya’s current election.

Of course, the “heck of a job” line in the United States in recent years is usually intended to be sarcastic.  The background is remembered with poignancy by those of us who had personal experience with Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast. As explained in Taegan Goddard’s Political Dictionary:

A “heck of a job” is a complete and total screw-up. It’s used, ironically, to show when one’s view of a situation is in contradiction to easily-observed facts.
The phrase comes from President George W. Bush who visited Louisiana in the aftermath of  Hurricane Katrina and told FEMA chief Michael D. Brown, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”
Brown later admitted he winced when Bush told him that: “I knew the minute he said that, the media and everybody else would see a disconnect between what he was saying and what I was witnessing on the ground. That’s the president’s style. His attitude and demeanor is always one of being a cheerleader and trying to encourage people to keep moving. It was just the wrong time and the wrong place.”
Brown resigned ten days after he was praised.

George W Bush praises FEMA head Michael Brown in Louisiana after Hurricane KatrinaPresident George W. Bush tells FEMA Administrator Michael Brown he’s doing “a heck of a job.” (Photo: AP)

 

Phee sworn in replacing Godec to lead State Africa Bureau; Biden’s team can now address policy for Kenyan election

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The Elephant published my last post on September 10 as “Amb. Godec is Well Placed to Articulate US Policy for Kenya’s 2022 Polls“.

Amb Molly Phee cuts ribbon at school at Dire Dawa, Ethiopia with Commander of CJTFHOA

120522-F-GA223-001
DIRE DAWA, Ethiopia (May 22, 2012) Rear Admiral Michael Franken, left, commander of Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa, Kumsa Baysa, principal of Gende Gerada Primary School, Molly Phee, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Ethiopia, Egei Wabere, an Gende Gerada Kebele education coordinator, and Stephen Fitzpatrick, program coordinator for U.S. Agency for International Development gather for a school building dedication and ribbon cutting ceremony for a new school house and two latrines at the Gende Gerada Primary School. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Ryan Labadens/Released)

This week the Senate worked through a few confirmations for State Department positions, including Amb. Molly Phee as Amb. Godec’s “permanent” successor as acting Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs.  She was sworn in last evening.

In the meantime, preparations for Kenya’s polls, just more than ten months away, continue to lag.

Assistant Secretary Phee, although most of her foreign service career has been spent in other contexts, has recent regional experience as Ambassador to South Sudan 2015-17 and Deputy Chief of Mission to Ethiopia in 2011-14.  She was serving as Chief of Staff to the Special Envoy for South Sudan when nominated to replace Susan Page to become the second Ambassador to South Sudan.

The Elephant also published my “9/11 and the United States-Kenya Relationship“.  See also Paul Tiyambe Zeleza’s longread from the next week, “9/11: The Day That Changed America and the World Order“

Ambassador Godec, as Acting Assistant Secretary of State, should articulate U.S. policy for Kenya’s election

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Kenya 2013 election IRI Electoral Commission voter education posterAmbassador Robert Godec has served as the Biden Administration’s Acting Assistant Secretary of State since the inauguration.

Ambassador Godec served in Kenya from August 2012, as Chargé d’Affaires following Amb. Scott Gration’s ouster, becoming the Ambassador in January 2013 after November 2012 confirmation hearings ahead of Kenya’s March 2013 election.

Godec thus led U.S. engagement with both the later stages of the 2013 election and the ensuing litigation (both the presidential election petition at the Supreme Court and the on-going attempt to prosecute IEBC technology procurement fraud), the formation of the Jubilee Party in 2016, the eventual replacement of the Issack Hassan-led IEBC following protests in which opposition supporters were killed, the attacks on the USAID-funded International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES) by the Jubilee Party and President Kenyatta and Cabinet members, the change of U.S. Administrations from Obama to Trump, the acquisition of the Kenya Integrated Election Management System (KIEMS) from Safran Morpho (n/k/a Idemia), the abduction and murder of IEBC acting ICT Director Chris Msando on the eve of the 2017 vote, the general election and the successful Supreme Court petition annulling the presidential portion of the vote, the boycotted re-run, the announcement of the “Big 4 Agenda” and the post-election diplomatic negotiations, the “People’s President” swearing in, the “Handshake” and most of first year of the Building Bridges Initiative.

For the status of things in December 2018 as Ambassador Godec’s replacement, Ambassador McCarter was being confirmed see: “Something afoot in Kenya: Nation newspaper is running investigative reporting on IEBC procurement corruption in 2017“.

So at this point, Ambassador Godec is a seasoned veteran of Kenya’s post-2007 politics who knows the ground intimately from the last two election cycles.  (His prospective “permanent” replacement, Mary Catherine Phee, was nominated in April and got a favorable vote by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this summer, but a confirmation vote by the full Senate is blocked along with dozens of other nominees.)

I was asked a few months ago to write an article about U.S. support for the BBI process, but I have been unable to do so because it is not clear to me what our policy has been or is now, and I have not found people involved willing to talk to me.  Given my role in telling the story of what went wrong in 2007 when I was involved myself it is no surprise that I might not be the one that people in Washington want to open up to now, but even people that I am used to talking to privately have not been as forthcoming as usual.  Nonetheless, Kenyans inevitably have questions, and those Americans who care may in the future.

Members of the Kenyan Diaspora Alliance-USA have announced that they have sent Freedom of Information Requests to USAID and some Kenyans on social media and in a few cases in print have asserted suspicions or accusations that the U.S. Government was intending to back “unconstitutional constitutional amendments” in the form of the BBI referendum for some negative purpose.  Looking at the degree to which the Obama Administration backed the passage of the new 2010 Constitution as the terminal event of the post-2007 “Reform Agenda”–to the point of having millions of dollars bleed over from neutral democracy assistance programing into supporting the “Yes” campaign in the 2010 referendum during Ambassador Ranneberger’s tenure–I am having a bit of difficulty understanding why my representatives in Washington would be working in general terms to undermine the new Constitution we helped midwife in the first place.  At the same time it has openly been our policy under Ambassador Godec originally and then his predecessor Ambassador McCarter to support the Building Bridges Initiative and we did provide some USAID funding for the conducting the consultative process itself.  I think it would be in the interests of the United States and of Kenyans for the State Department to get out front of the questions now, with the BBI referendum effort rejected both at trial court level and on appeal, and with the Kenyan presidential race that has been going on since the Handshake entering into its later stages.

We remain Kenya’s largest donor, we have many relationships and support many assistance programs of all sorts in Kenya.  Most Kenyans remain in need, and we continue to have the same issues regarding terrorism as during the past 25 years (most especially since the 1998 embassy bombing). In general the geographic neighborhood is experiencing more specific crises and some overall erosion of peace, prosperity and governance.  While we may not be as influential in Kenya as we were prior to 2007, and anyone with money can play in Kenyan politics, we will be engaged and we will have influence in 2022.  So there is no time like the present to articulate what our policy is for the coming year.

Here is my take from December 2019: “Important Kenya BBI reads, and my comments“.

And from January 2020: “How will the Trump Administration’s support for the Uhuru-Raila handshake play out in 2020?”

New U.S.-Kenya links as election approaches

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The Association of Kenyan Diaspora Organizations will be holding its annual conference in Seattle this weekend (August 27-28), including an appearance by IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati who will discuss the status of diaspora voting for the 2022 General Election. See my last post which discusses the diaspora voting issue: “Kenya’s IEBC ‘races’ to fulfill mandate from 2010 Constitution for lawful 2022 general election; behind again after 2013 and 2017 failures“.

“Republican Senators urge Biden to prioritize Kenya-U.S. trade deal” Business Daily, August 25, 2021

“BBI Ruling Leaves Kenya at a Crossroads” blog post by Michelle Gavin at Council on Foreign Relations “Africa in Transition“. [Ed. note: Michelle Gavin was also handling the Africa program at CFR during the fraudulent 2007 election and ensuing crisis.  Non-resident fellow Jendayi Frazer, of course, was Asst. Secretary of State during the election and crisis.  Between the two there is unusually intimate institutional memory for the Council on Foreign Relations, along with the related competing interests associated with the connections.]

In the World Politics Review weekly Africa Watch newsletter, Chris Olaoluwa Ogunmodede argues that “A Court Ruling Just Upended Kenya’s Political Landscape“.

Growers Alliance Coffee from Kenya Diaspora Trade: Growers Alliance Coffee from Kenya

Here is the link to read about and order from Growers Alliance Coffee from my old friends Martin and Purity in St. Augustine, Florida.

Kenya’s IEBC “races” to fulfill mandates from 2010 Constitution for lawful 2022 general election; behind again after 2013 and 2017 failures

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Kenya 2007 Election campaign posters “Kalonzo Musyoka for President” on duka Eastern Kenya

 

For the latest from Kenya’s IEBC, see “Electoral body in rush to seal 2022 loopholes” from The People’s Daily.

Same issues as 2013 and 2017, same alleged frantic time-crunch.

For instance, the 2010 “New Katiba” granted the right to vote to Kenyans in the diaspora, starting with the 2012 general election. Even though the election was postponed to 2013, the IEBC under then-Chairman Issack Hassan elected to disenfranchise diaspora voters in spite of the coming into force of the new Constitution.

See, “IFES to webccast workshop on Kenya Diaspora voting “, Nov 1, 2012, Africommons.

But see, “Kenya, Attempt to suppress the diaspora vote“, Dec 12, 2012, by Nathan Wangusi, Pambazuka.

After the failures of 2013, in particular the procurement-fraud driven failure of electronic poll books and the breakdown of the results transmission system with no organized manual backup, and full election results not published (see “It’s mid-June: another month goes by without Kenya’s election results while Hassan goes to Washington) Hassan was eventually forced out by protests in 2016.  See my Page covering the 2012-13 election in detail.

After departing the IEBC Hassan has been on the international election assistance circuit, having already traveled to observe (positively) Djiboutian President Guelleh’s 2016 re-election on behalf of IGAD while still IEBC Chairman. Most recently he was associated with a USAID-funded joint International Republican Institute/National Democratic Institute election assessment in Ethiopia this year. (See report released today.)

The current IEBC Chairman, Wafula Chebukati, was then appointed by President Uhuru Kenyatta from the nominees of a controversial selection process and took office in January 2017 in time for the general election and annulled presidential vote that August, marked by the unsolved abduction, torture and murder of the ICT Director and the subsequent resignation of a majority of the Commissioners.

Although civil society groups had obtained a 2015 court ruling to enforce the diaspora voting requirement of the Constitution, the IEBC still failed in 2017 to implement more than a very limited, truncated, diaspora vote process.

See “Diaspora Voting in Kenya: a Promise Denied“, Elizabeth Iams Wellman and Beth Elise Whitaker, African Affairs, Vol. 120, Issue 479, April 2021, Pages 199-217. (In 2010, Kenya extended voting rights to its estimated 3,000,000 citizens living abroad . . . Yet . . . fewer than 3,000 Kenyans were permitted to vote from abroad in the 2013 and 2017 presidential elections. What explains the failure of the Kenyan government to implement diaspora voting on a broader scale? . . . We argue that uncertainty about the number of Kenyan emigrants and their political preferences, paired with a highly competitive electoral climate, meant there was little political will to push for more widespread implementation of diaspora voting.)

A year ago I warned: “Kenya Election Preparation: raising alarm for 2022, past secrets still buried“.

Essential: JOHN GITHONGO – Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: The Choices Facing Kenya and the Kenyattas | The Elephant

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JOHN GITHONGO – Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: The Choices Facing Kenya and the Kenyattas | The Elephant
— Read on www.theelephant.info/features/2021/04/23/between-the-devil-and-the-deep-blue-sea-the-choices-facing-kenya-and-the-kenyattas/

How independent will Kenya’s Election Commission be?

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Djibouti IGAD Election Observation Mission press conference led by Kenya’s Issack Hassan of IEBC
Former IEBC Chairman Isaack Hassan leads IGAD Election Observation to Djibouti

As noted in my last post, Kenya’s outgoing President, Uhuru Kenyatta, has initiated his process of of appointing new Commissioners to fill longstanding vacancies in most of the seats on Kenya’s Independent Electoral and Boundary Commission. How independent will the Commission be in conducting the expected Building Bridges Initiative constitutional referendum and the 2022 general election?

While I have my own expectations based on my experience from 2007 and 2013 and my investigation and research regarding those two elections, along with watching events of 2016 and 2017 and since, the purpose of this post is to highlight an academic paper on this very subject published in London by the Westminster Foundation for Democracy with funding from Her Majesty’s Government. Nic Cheeseman, renowned Professor of Democracy and “friend of the blog” and Jorgen Elklit, Professor Emeritus at Aarhus University are the authors: “Understanding and Assessing Electoral Commission Independence: a New Framework“.

Take time to read the whole thing, which proposes a systematic way to study and grapple with the question in any country–“eleven criteria through which to evaluate electoral commission independence, grouped into three main categories of autonomy: a) institutional and leadership; b) functional and decision-making; and c) financial and budgetary. For each criteria, a battery of questions is provided to enable readers to qualitatively evaluate whether the degree of independence in each case is: ‘highly satisfactory’, ‘fairly satisfactory’ or ‘not satisfactory’.” But in particular, the authors have chosen Kenya 2017 as one of the three case studies to cover in depth:

Case 1: Separating fact from fiction in Kenya 2017

The Kenyan general election of 2017 provides a compelling example of the difficulty of proving the independence (or otherwise) of electoral commissions. The Kenyan electoral commission is formally independent as indicated by its name, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC). It was created by a provision of the 2010 constitution, following the dissolution of the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK), which had been heavily criticised for mishandling the 2007 general elections. The Commission is made up of seven commissioners, one of who is designated to be the Chair. Although the Commission is appointed by the President, there are a number of positive indicators of formal independence. Most notably, the Commission was created by a provision in the 2010 constitution and the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission Act; the list of commissioners selected by the president must be confirmed by parliament; and, none of the commissioners may be a current member of a political party, implying a degree of insulation from partisan ties. . . .

. . . .

By the end of 2017, it was therefore clear that the electoral commission was not fully independent, that partisan pressure was undermining reform efforts, and that the murder of Mr Msando has generated a great deal of fear and concern for electoral officials at multiple levels. However, it was not clear exactly how far the IEBC’s independence had been compromised, or exactly what the consequences of this had been. The Supreme Court’s nullification of the first election suggests that the problems within the IEBC were substantial, and encouraged the widespread perception that the Commission had been biased in favour of the ruling party. Given a history of controversial elections and of alleged partisan bias it is natural to assume that the independence of the Commission had been fundamentally violated. But it remains possible that these errors resulted from weak governance and capacity rather than a deliberate attempt to rig the election in favour of one side or another because a parallel vote tabulation by domestic observers was in line with the official outcome. The Kenyan case therefore demonstrates how difficult it can be to prove a lack of independence beyond reasonable doubt, even when major questions are raised about the quality of an election.

While Kenya’s IEBC is clearly not a ‘highly independent’ electoral commission, it is harder to say exactly where it belongs. The reports of electoral observers would suggest ‘moderately independent’ but the evidence from dissident commissioners and some civil society groups would say ‘not independent’ at all. A fair evaluation would place it somewhere in between, probably falling on the ‘not independent’ side.

Biding time on democracy in Kenya and Uganda

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Kenya election 2007 banner for Kibaki Nakuru
Ugandan MP and presidential candidate Bobi Wine will speak at the McCain Institute’s virtual 2021 Sedona Forum. The State Department has issued a statement criticizing the January Ugandan election and announcing that it is issuing visa restrictions on unnamed Ugandan officials responsible for undermining the democratic process

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Three years after the resignations of a majority of Kenya’s election commissioners, President Uhuru Kenyatta has formally taken notice of the four vacancies and gazetted the process through which he will appoint replacements.

Why now? While the President has not explained specifically to my knowledge, his ruling Jubilee Party is seeking to have the Independent Boundaries and Electoral Commission conduct a constitutional referendum within weeks to approve amendments derived from the “Building Bridges Initiative”. (A version of a proposal to amend the constitution was passed by most of Kenya’s county assemblies positioned as a citizen initiative. It is now before Parliament where there is internal debate among proponents as to whether to approve it for referendum as is, or to allow amendments to what has already been passed by the counties, which would raise additional legal questions. Challenges to the legality of the process to date are pending in the courts already.)

Although Kenya’s courts have allowed the IEBC to continue to conduct by-elections and all its other business with only three of seven commission seats filled since the most recent resignations in April 2018 there seems to be an expectation that appointing new commissioners is desirable ahead of the referendum and the general election approaching in August 2022. Legislation signed into law last year changes the appointment powers for choosing the committee that will interview applicants for the IEBC slots and winnow choices for the President. Four of the seven screening committee members will now named by the Parliamentary Service Commission, tipping the balance in favor of the current office holders.

Remember that U.S. president Joe Biden has “been around”, with far more diplomatic experience than any of his four most recent predecessors in the White House. In 2010 as Vice President he met with Kenyan Speaker Kenneth Marende, along with President Kibaki and Prime Minister Odinga, ahead of that year’s constitutional referendum during the period in which Kenya was deciding between justice-oriented remedies and impunity for the 2007-08 Post-Election Violence.

This is what I wrote at the time, “Marende praised by U.N. Commissioner on Human Rights, meeting with Biden; South Mugirango by-election this week”:

Kenyan Speaker of Parliament Kenneth Marende seems to be getting an increased international profile. Navanethem Pillay, UN Commissioner for Human Rights, called on Marende on Monday, expressing concern regarding progress on prosecution of suspects for post election violence. According to the Standard she singled out Marende for praise, “saying he had made immense contribution in stabilising the country through some historic rulings and the manner he handled issues in Parliament”.

U.S. Vice President Biden will call on Marende Tuesday as well, along with his meeting with President Kibaki and Prime Minister Odinga.

Interestingly, Marende says that Parliament “would easily pass” legislation to provide for a “local tribunal” to try election violence cases under Kenyan criminal law “if the ICC acted swiftly by taking away key perpetrators of the violence”.

Biden will leave Thursday morning, the day of the South Mugirango by-election to fill the seat vacated by a successful election petition against Omingo Magara, originally of ODM. As it stands the race is hot, with Raila Odinga campaigning for the substitute ODM nominee, Ibrahim Ochoi, William Ruto campaigning for Magara running as a PDP nominee and heavyweights in PNU affiliates split among Magara and other candidates.