Tag Archives: IFES

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 report that Trump Administration learned of staggering procurement corruption at top of DRC’s Election Commission “a few weeks before” 2018 election, stayed mum

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In a must read story of “Africa in DC”, Buzzfeed’s Albert Samaha peels back several layers of the story of how DRC strongman Joseph Kabila managed his 2016-19 election problem with the new Trump Administration: “A Secretive Company Needed to Convince Washington That Congo’s Election Would Be “Free and Fair.” It Found A Friendly Ear Among Trump Allies.”

Previous reporting disclosed internal dissent within the State Department, including an early 2019 story from Robbie Graemer and Jeffcoate O’Donnell I noted here: “Foreign Policy article gives insight on disagreements within Trump Administration on backing off on criticism of flawed DRC vote.”

Kabila’s innovation was to turn directly to his Israeli surveillance and security contractors to broker the hiring of lobbyists connected to the Trump Administration, such as Robert Stryk’s Sonoran Policy Group who repped the Kenyatta-Ruto Administration in Washington during its 2017 re-election effort. Kenyatta hired Stryk through the Kenyan foreign ministry rather than through surveillance contractors. One could suggest that the use of outside-the-Beltway intermediaries raised eyebrows and ultimately loosened tongues.

Update: Here is a link to the U.S. Foreign Agent Registration Act filing of Mer Security and Communications, Ltd of Halon, Israel for the Government of the DRC for the 2018 election. And the filing of Stryk’s Sonoran Policy Group for their subcontracted portion, including lobbying the National Security Council, and hosting “the Cobalt Reception”. (Further on Sonoran Group, see “Trump-linked lobbyist turns from Gulf Arabs to more toxic clients,” al-Monitor, Feb. 19, 2020.)

You owe it to yourself to read Samaha’s whole story, but the thing that is most profoundly disappointing to me is the report that my government learned about massive corruption at the CENI in time to say something before the vote but elected not to.

This casts new color to the internal debate within the U.S. government over what to say and do, and what to disclose, when CENI subsequently announced “results” that lacked credibility.

The excuse for not speaking to government-sponsored election fraud is supposedly the fear of instability from aggrieved voters faced with intransigent incumbents—a real concern—but how can we claim to be serious about democracy support when we chose to keep quite on obviously debilitating fraud before the vote? A key question for me about the Kenyan election disaster in 2007 has always been how much we knew about Kibaki’s intentions before the election, having documented through FOIA that Ambassador Ranneberger personally witnessed the wrongful changing of tallies at the Kenyan IEBC but still encouraged Kenyans to accept the vote without disclosure.

Update: Assistant Secretary of State Tibor Nagy appears to have effectively announced the “climb down” by the State Department on supporting Tshisekedi as the de facto president at a CSIS dinner in Washington on January 30, 2019, while still asserting “In addition, we will continue to voice our disapproval of the poor implementation of a flawed electoral process, which was far below the standards of a fully democratic process. We will hold accountable those most responsible for undermining D.R.C.’s democratic processes and institutions.” Nagy celebrated a peaceful transition of power “that few thought possible”. “Ultimately, the Congolese people have the final word. After President Kabila left office, there have been no meaningful protests to the election outcome. Felix Tshisekedi has vowed to unite the country, reform the security forces and justice sector, fight corruption, and spur greater U.S. investment and it is in our interest to help him succeed.”

On March 21, 2019 the Treasury Department announced personal sanctions against the two top officials of CENI:

Under Nangaa’s leadership, CENI officials inflated by as much as $100 million the costs for the electronic voting machine contract with the intent to use surplus funds for personal enrichment, bribes, and campaign costs to fund the election campaign of Kabila’s candidate. Nangaa, with other CENI officials, awarded an election-related contract and doubled the award amount on the understanding that the winning company would award the extra funds to a DRC company controlled by CENI leadership. Nangaa approved the withdrawal of CENI operation funds for non-authorized budget items for personal use by DRC government employees. Nangaa ordered CENI employees to fabricate expense receipts to cover spending gaps resulting from CENI funds being used for personal gain. Nangaa delivered bribes to Constitutional Court justices to uphold a decision by the CENI to delay DRC’s 2016 elections.

Consider in light of the ultimately similar context from Kabila’s alleged 2011 “re-election” during Secretary Clinton’s State Department tenure as I warned about in a post here on August 8, 2018: “With DRC’s Kabila Backing a Substitute Candidate This Year, Time to Review the International Observation Experience from 2011 Vote”:

At the time of the last election in 2011, Africa democratizers were buoyed by an understood success story in Ghana, the hope of an “Arab Spring”, the lull of violence in Iraq and more generally encouraging environment. As explained in my posts from that time, the U.S.- funded International Observation Mission (conducted by the Carter Center) found the election to fall short of adequacy by the applicable international standards and said so explicitly.

Initially standing up to Kabila over the failures of his alleged re-election and pushing for them to be addressed appeared to be U.S. policy. If so, we apparently changed our mind for some reason. Tolerating a bad election then leaves us in a more difficult position with seven years of water under that bridge. The U.S. has stepped up recently to pressure Kabila to schedule the election, allow opposition and stand down himself.

In this vein, we need to be careful, and transparent, as things proceed to continue to evaluate realistically what is feasible and where we are really able and willing to assist.  In particular, the decision to initiate and fund one or more Election Observation Missions for a vote in these circumstances should involve serious soul-searching at the State Department (and/or USAID).

On the last election:

DRC: “We have to debunk the idea that it is peace versus transparent elections. The idea that lousy elections are going to bring piece is madness.”

Carter Center calls it as they see it in DRC

U.S. and other Western donors support review of election irregularities in DRC — offer technical assistance

State Department to Kabila on DRC Presidential Election: “Nevermind”?

Should there be an international Code of Conduct for Exit Polls and Parallel Vote Tabulations?

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[As the year winds down and things crank up in Kenya’s 2022 presidential campaign and BBI referendum I am going through some of my old unpublished drafts – this is an idea that could matter that the parties involved do not have an incentive to bring forward.]

To me, the answer to the headline question is clearly “yes”.

Very specifically to my experience as in Kenya in 2007 as International Republican Institute Resident East Africa Director, I was able to explain to the USAID Kenya Mission that we at IRI were bound as a party to a published International Code of Conduct in conducting an International Election Observation that required us to maintain independence from the Ambassador.

(Readers may recall that then-Ambassador Ranneberger had pushed for a USAID-funded IRI Election Observation Mission for Kenya’s 2007 election which USAID had decided not to conduct in their ordinary planning process for the election and that IRI did not seek to undertake.)

We on the IRI staff were able to push back on Ambassador Ranneberger’s desire to select Election Observation Mission delegates, although we ended up informally going along with Ranneberger’s choice of Connie Newman and Chester Crocker as lead delegates (Crocker was not available to travel on the dates required).

The rest of the delegates were our choices rather than the Ambassador’s and we resisted Ranneberger’s expressed desire to remove his predecessor Amb. Mark Bellamy from the Observation until Ranneberger “laid down a marker” as he put it.

Likewise, we invited against Ranneberger’s wishes Bellamy’s predecessor as Ambassador to Kenya, Johnnie Carson, who was then the Africa lead at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and later Assistant Secretary of State under Obama (Carson was not cleared to participate–I was privately relieved for two reasons: it got me off the hook on a potential conflict with Ranneberger and while Carson seemed like a real asset for the Observation I thought the optics of having a high ranking Executive Branch employee and particularly one directly in an Intelligence Community job would not be great from an independence standpoint. In hindsight it might have done some real good to have him there.).

Unfortunately, on the now perhaps infamous Exit Poll, I was more or less naked in dealing with USAID and the Ambassador. The polling program was under a separate Cooperative Agreement between the CEPPS (IRI, NDI and IFES) and USAID which had started with the Exit Poll for the 2005 Constitutional Referendum. (The defeat of the proposed “Wako Draft” Constitution gave rise to the Orange Democratic Party which led Kenya’s opposition in the 2007, 2013 and 2017 elections, culminating in the March 2018 “handshake” and the present “Building Bridges Initiative” referendum campaign).

The 2005-07 polling program was scheduled to end with a public opinion survey in September 2007, well ahead of the general election, the date of which was not set until weeks later. USAID amended the Agreement to add the general election Exit Poll at the end. It was only after I initially reported a few days before the election that we were going to have to cancel the Exit Poll due to the objection of Electoral Commission of Kenya Chairman Samuel Kivuitu that I was told by USAID that the Exit Poll as a higher priority for the Ambassador than the Election Observation itself. Kivuitu’s acquiescence was achieved.

On the late afternoon of Election Day as I was dragging my feet on releasing preliminary numbers before the polls closed I was told that “the whole reason” for doing the Exit Poll was for “early intelligence” for the Ambassador and USAID went to our subcontracted polling firm to get the figures. [Remember that I covered all this in complaints to the Inspectors General at USAID and State.]

IRI had no established backstop to protect itself from interference on the Exit Poll because unlike on the Election Observation Mission there was no published Code or Agreement that I could use to push back to preserve our independence.

We had agreed internally at IRI that we should not report any Exit Poll numbers externally including to USAID or the Embassy until the polls closed, and it was quite clear that we had no contractual obligation to make a report during the vote. But given that USAID was willing to go underneath us to the pollster it was out of our hands literally and there were no clear standards beyond that.

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.

Kenya USAID IRI poll release press conference
Kenya USAID IRI poll release press conference

Kenya’s IEBC announced 18 months ago that it would finally open its vote tally servers to public, but has failed to do so

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“IEBC unreformed less than two years prior to 2022 General Election“, The Star, Aug. 7, 2020.

“2017 election: IEBC shopping for expert to audit its systems“, Daily Nation, Feb. 12, 2019:

IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati says the commission is shopping for an external consultant to audit its data systems to finally reveal what might have happened during the transmission of results in the August 2017 Presidential Election that was nullified by the Supreme Court.

Broaching the topic for the first time nearly one-and-half years later, Mr Chebukati said results of the audit will be made public.

CONSULTANT

“It is not true that we refused to open the servers,” he said, in reference to a Supreme Court order the commission violated. “What we need is an external consultant to carry out a systems audit and then open the servers to the public.”

. . . .

Accessing the commission’s servers has been a sensitive issue since the Supreme Court allowed Mr Raila Odinga to access the system during the presidential petition he filed after IEBC declared Mr Uhuru Kenyatta the winner of the August 8, 2017 election.

In a unanimous decision, the seven judges told the commission to open the servers because understanding how the system works would help the court come to a fair decision.

. . . .

However, the IEBC refused to open the servers, with its lawyer Paul Muite telling the court that the delay in opening the system was attributable to the time difference between Europe and Kenya.

“The IEBC servers are hosted in France, and the staff who are supposed to give the access window with safeguards are just waking up and will prepare the system in about an hour for the Nasa team to access,” Mr Muite told the court.

But the servers were never opened. 

Kenya Election Preparation: raising alarm for 2022, past secrets still buried

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I feel obligated to raise the alarm about Kenyan election preparation with 2022 fast approaching and a potential contentious constitutional referendum even sooner.

Why worry? The track record.

Blatant fraud in the 2007 presidential election led to extensive violence, followed by “herd impunity” for the politicians involved in both the fraud and the violence. According to a later press report the US issued undisclosed sanctions against some members of the Electoral Commission of Kenya based on evidence of bribery but made no public disclosure or known follow up.

A murky 2013 election process gave power to primary figures understood by public reputation and ICC charge to be among the most responsible for the 2007-08 violence. Procurement fraud prosecutions from 2013 linger in Kenya’s courts and IEBC recipients of “Chickengate” bribes from a British election vendor have never been prosecuted (the British payers of the bribes have completed their jail time). The IEBC was replaced at the expense of some loss of life to protestors at the hands of the Government.

And of course we all know that Kenya’s 2017 presidential election was legally deficient to the point of being annulled by the Supreme Court, leading to the 2018 “handshake” under which Kenya’s is presently operating. The IEBC has lost a majority of its members–one fleeing the country. The CEO who was hired by and held over from the removed 2013 “Chickengate” group was fired, but there has been no prosecution for the election eve abduction, torture and murder of Chris Msando, the acting ICT Director.

To summarize where I am going to leave my Freedom of Information Act investigation of the failures to properly administer Kenya’s 2013 election:

I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to USAID in 2015 for their records on support of the IEBC for 2013. The records were sent to Washington from Nairobi in late 2015 and released gradually between April 2017 and May 2020.

“Kenya Election FOIA News: Election Assistance Agreement shows US paid for failed “Results Transmission System” April 13, 2017.

USAID eventually has provided a fair bit of material about their Kenya Electoral Party and Process Strengthening Program, but redacted the basic reporting and evaluation of what went wrong with the failed procurement of a Results Transmission System and the rest of the technology and other failures at the IEBC. To me, the redactions based on the assertion that this material is exempt from FOIA as proprietary commercial information of the not-for-profit International Foundation for Election Systems, IFES, were not plausibly legally justified. At this point, I am disappointed as an American that USAID was unwilling to be more transparent, because I think the continued failure to have an open accounting of the problems in the 2007, 2013 and 2017 election assistance programs leaves us in an unnecessarily poor position to hope to do better in 2022.

USAID finally sent me a heavily redacted version of the last 2032 pages of their 2013 “Kenya Election and Political Process Strengthening” program file from my 2015 FOIA request May 6, 2020.

Kenya 2013: Redacted reports to USAID suggest the problems with the IEBC acquisition of the Biometric Voter Registration system and the electronic Poll Books fed into the ultimate failure of the USAID-funded IFES Results Transmission System May 14, 2020.

For some Americans the 2013 election in Kenya was a big success because Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto took over from Mwai Kibaki, Kalonzo Musyoka and PM Raila Odinga without the level of violence associated with the preceding 2007 election. For others of us, and for many Kenyans, the failure of the Results Transmission System and the lack of a credible total vote tally mattered quite a lot. How people actually vote matters. The failure compounded the bad precedents that played out with more election technology procurement and other problems in 2017 and are still “on deck” today.

At this point I am going to leave IFES and USAID to decide what their consciences and legal standards require about the problems from 2013 rather than try to pry more information out through “pro bono” legal work. Three years has gone by since the annulled 2017 vote without even bringing the Kenyan procurement fraud prosecution from 2013 to trial, let alone taking any major steps forward to fix things for 2022 or a pre-election referendum. This is wrong, as well as dangerous, and I think we Americans could help this time if we are willing to (after attending to our own challenges in preparing for our own elections).

I will include one new document to show the nature of the problem: an email between USAID and IFES from the afternoon of March 7, 2013, three days after the vote at a time when the Results Transmission System had failed. IEBC Chairman Issack Hassan had announced that the Commission had shut down the system and I was at the High Court with my AfriCOG friends seeking an injunction to prevent the IEBC from announcing a “winner” without the full results.

The EU Election Observers attended the court hearing but I don’t know if anyone from the USAID-funded international or domestic Election Observation teams did, or what they knew at the time about the procurement failure on the Results Transmission System. Regardless, I think transparency was needed in real time, and I certainly do not see the values served by keeping the substantive reporting on what went wrong under wraps seven years later (aside from the question of FOIA compliance).

Kenya 2013 election Results Transmission System FOIA IFES USAID

See Election Assistance FOIA update: disappointed to see from USAID records that IFES was supporting Kenya IEBC/Kenyatta-Ruto defense of 2013 election petition by civil society and opposition, July 18, 2018.

So where are we now? Under the gun again:

“Big worries about electoral body and 2022 polls“, Sunday Nation, August 9, 2020:

We’re two years to the next poll if August still holds as the election date, which means the window for reforms is slowly closing, and if we don’t start pushing and getting some of these policies, rules, regulations and structures in place, we risk repeating the same mistakes we made in 2013 and 2017 and even earlier,” warned Ms Regina Opondo, the chairperson of the Election Observation Group (ELOG) steering committee.

Mr Ndung’u Wainaina, the executive director of International Centre for Policy and Conflict, told the Nation that the IEBC needs to be given financial autonomy and to devolve its resources down to the polling stations.

“IEBC should be reformed to restore public confidence, credibility and integrity. The problem is not the Constitution, but how the IEBC Act and recruitment of personnel is designed, which allows gross political interference,” Mr Wainaina said in an email to the Nation.

Here is my page with blog posts from the 2013 election cycle as seen from a public view outside of the Kenyan or donor governments.

Election Observation and Democracy Assistance: what is CEPPS?

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CEPPS stands for the the Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening; the members are the International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES).

Although CEPPS has been functioning as a USAID master funding mechanism for Cooperative Agreements for Democracy Assistance since the early post-Cold War era in 1995, it is only more recently that it has started to take on a more public face as an entity as opposed to the three constituent organizations. (See the explanation from their branding strategists here [with the colorful image of a Masaii woman voting])

While I have no idea why this has evolved in recent times, I will note that building up CEPPS as an “entity” with its own brand could be seen from outside as a way to establish an alternative structure directly tied to USAID in competition with funding for democracy assistance through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

IRI and NDI are two of four core NED institutions. IRI and NDI were incorporated by the leaders of the Republican and Democratic National Committees respectively, pursuant to the legislation establishing the National Endowment for Democracy as private organization, with a bipartisan board and Congressionally-appropriated funding and subject to the Freedom of Information Act. (The other two NED core institutions are the Center for International Private Enterprise [CIPE] affiliated with the United States Chamber of Commerce and the Solidarity Center affiliated with the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations or AFL-CIO.)

IFES, on the other hand, which the branding material describes as a “core institution” of CEPPS, borrowing the NED terminology for the consortium members, is a more explicitly “private” entity created in 1987, four years later in than NED, during the second Reagan Administration, at the instance of then-USAID Director Peter McPherson as he describes in a 2017 interview on the IFES website. McPherson went to a American political campaign manager with a “bipartisan tone,” Cliff White (known publicly primarily for his role as Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign manager) to found the nonprofit because among the contractors USAID used there was a lack of technical expertise on the mechanics of organizing and holding elections. USAID provided an initial grant but IFES is not part of the Congressional mandate and annual budget appropriation process of NED and its four “core institutions” including IRI and NDI.

Readers will remember that IFES is a nonprofit corporation (like IRI and NDI) and was registered as such with the Kenyan government when President Kenyatta and his party leaders and government officials attacked IFES for not being registered as an “NGO” in late 2016 and early 2017 and allegedly being too cooperative with the opposition while managing the USAID election assistance and supporting the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission. Of course since IFES had been working on the same basis in essentially the same role with ECK since 2001 under Samuel Kivuitu’s Chairmanship and the IIEC and then IEBC under Issack Hassan, I saw this as pre-election “muscle flexing” by the incumbent President Kenyatta and his coalition directed at both the new Chebukati-led Independent Commission taking office in January to replace Hassan’s group after opposition protests and at IFES. The democracy donor diplomatic group led by US Ambassador Godec pushed back but Kenyatta’s Administration used its control of Immigration to force out the IFES Country Director and another key IFES employee. An outside replacement Country Director was “parachuted in” mid-March for the August 8 election.

See also “USAID is using a model for Kenya election assistance contracting that creates unnecessary conflicts of interest between organizations supporting election observation, voter education and embedded support to the Election Commission“.

Here is a discussion of USAID use of CEPPs from a review conducted by the Office of Inspector General for USAID focused on Europe, Eurasia and the Middle East released November 26, 2019, titled “Additional Actions Are Needed to Improve USAID’s Democracy, Human Rights and Governance Programs”:

CEPPS was founded in 1995 by the National Democratic Institute (NDI), the International Republican Institute (IRI), and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), and holds a global Leader with Associate assistance award with the DRG Center to implement a variety of DRG activities, including political party assistance programs.

According to USAID officials, CEPPS received a series of global assistance awards from USAID for 1995 through 2020, which helped CEPPS partners develop a capacity to deliver political party assistance programming and establish a global footprint with a presence in every region in which USAID operates. The current global assistance mechanism was awarded in 2015 (a cooperative agreement) and provides missions the option to offer funding opportunities directly to CEPPS rather than develop a notice of funding opportunity locally.

Agency mission and headquarters personnel reported that, overall, CEPPS partners have excellent technical leadership and organizational experience to work collaboratively with host-country political leaders. CEPPS partners have developed strong work relationships with local stakeholders in many countries and are acknowledged as global leaders in the DRG sector. For example, in Ukraine, mission officials praised the NDI, IRI, and IFES Chiefs of Party as outstanding leaders who are highly accomplished and respected in their areas of expertise. They noted that the technical skills and positive reputations of these individuals are an asset for the mission and its DRG portfolio.

However, Agency officials also noted that missions often default to working with CEPPS partners through USAID’s global assistance award with the DRG Center—instead of pursuing opportunities to partner with other organizations that can provide similar services. Relying on CEPPS gives significant influence to a small group of partners to implement political party assistance programs and increases USAID’s reputational risk. Specific concerns reported to us by USAID officials include:

• NDI, IRI, and IFES have significant political connections and powerful benefactors on their boards of directors, including sitting Members of the U.S. Congress, former Ambassadors, and other political appointees. NDI and IRI in particular could be perceived as extensions of the U.S. Democratic and Republican Parties, respectively, by host-country stakeholders. For example, NDI’s website acknowledges that it has a “loose affiliation” with the U.S. Democratic Party and IRI’s current Chairman is a U.S. Senator in the Republican Party.

• In Georgia, CEPPS attempted to exclude a host-country democratic political party. In a 2017 letter to USAID/Georgia written on behalf of NDI and IRI, CEPPS stated that it would temporarily suspend assistance to a Georgian political party because of media reports of derogatory remarks made by party leaders about CEPPS partner staff, along with CEPPS’s disagreement with the party’s political platform and rhetoric. The mission responded to CEPPS’s letter by directing NDI and IRI to continue delivering assistance to the Georgian political party in compliance with USAID’s Political Party Assistance Policy.

Update on Kenya 2013 election procurement corruption saga: magistrate dismisses two defendants after prosecution case, rules trial to proceed for Oswago and Shollei

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“Court rules ex-IEBC boss Oswago has case to answer over election device procurement malpractices” The Star, 27 May, 2020:

This means the duo will now have to defend themselves over the charges levelled against them. Thirty-six witnesses testified in the case.

The court however acquitted two others who had been charged alongside Oswago. The magistrate said no case has been made against Edward Kenga Karisa and Willy Gachanja Kamanga.

In 2013, Oswago and Shollei were arraigned in court charged with failing to comply with the law relating to procurement.

The two allegedly failed to ensure the changes made to the contract awarded to Face Technologies Limited by the IEBC for the supply of Electronic Voter Identification in Tender No. IEBC14/2011-2012 were approved by the IEBC tender committee.

On a different count, they were accused of using their offices to improperly confer a benefit on Face Technologies Limited by approving payment of Sh1.39 billion for the supply of EVIDs without ascertaining that devices supplied were inspected, accepted and met the technical specifications in the contract.

Kenya 2013 Polling Station Nairobi Dagorreti North

Kenyan elections: What happened to the Anti-Corruption investigation of ICT procurement fraud in 2013 (as ordered by the Supreme Court)? [Part One]

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The articles quoted below indicate that the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission was already “on the case” having received information before the election about potential procurement fraud and started investigating even before the Supreme Court ordered such an investigation in its ruling upholding the IEBC’s award of the winner’s certificate to Kenyatta and Ruto.

“IEBC officials may be prosecuted over gadget failure.” Business Daily 16 April 2018:

Electoral commission officials and vendors of electronic systems used in the March 4 General Election may face criminal prosecution after the Supreme Court recommended they be investigated over the failure of the gadgets. 

In its full judgment of presidential election petitions released Tuesday the six judges said there were squabbles among Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) officials over the procurement leading to the failure of the electronic voter identification devices (EVID) and Result Transmission System (RTS).

“We recommend that this matter be entrusted to the relevant State agency for further investigation and possible prosecution of suspects,” the six judges led by Chief Justice Willy Mutunga, the Supreme Court President, said.

Failure of the devices was at the heart of the petitions challenging the election of Uhuru Kenyatta as Kenya’s fourth president filed by Raila Odinga, who emerged second in the election, and Africa Centre for Open Governance (Africog).

. . . .

The judges said the electronic system procurement was marked by competing interests some involving impropriety or even criminality. 

“Different reasons explain this failure but, by the depositions of Dismus Ong’ondi, the failure mainly arose from the misunderstandings and squabbles among IEBC members during the procurement process,” said the judges. 

The court said enough evidence was produced to show that EVID and RTS stalled and crashed.

. . . .

With the recommendation of investigation and prosecution which was bolded on page 113 page of the judgment, the Supreme Court has set the stage for the Director of Public Prosecution and the police department to swing into action. 

Mr Ongo’ndi, Head of IT at the electoral agency, had cautioned the electoral commission against buying the EVIDs, saying they required more time and a parallel technology to function optimally. 

In an internal memo to Deputy Commission Secretary for support services Wilson Shollei and copied to IEBC CEO James Oswago, Mr Ong’ondi said the kits tender should not be awarded because of the risk that the gadgets. 

The contract was awarded to Face Technologies at a cost of Sh1.3 billion, according to Mr Oswago, who said the devices failed because of an operational challenge.

“We have nothing to hide, we are ready for any investigations and the procurement being subjected to public scrutiny,” Mr Oswago said Tuesday.

The poll books were meant to identify a voter before one could cast a ballot. They were also to verify that one was a registered voter and account for all those who voted, eliminating the risk of multiple voting, ghost voters and ballot stuffing. 

Mr Oswago said the commission abandoned the transmission software developed by Next Technologies during the referendum and by elections to develop its own for the General Election at a cost of Sh40 million. That would put the blame on the transmission system failure at the door of IEBC’s IT department which is headed by Mr Ong’ondi.

The failed software was developed in partnership with International Foundation for electoral System (IFES), which also bought the servers. The mobile phones were supplied by Safaricom.

The procurement of electronic systems was marked by controversy from the word go leading to the cancellation of the tenders for the Biometric Voter Register (BVR).

Former President Mwai Kibaki and former Prime Minister intervened and the kits were eventually delivered through a Canadian government loan of Sh6 billion.

. . . .

The Elections Act sets out offences that can be committed by commission officials including “without reasonable cause does or omits to do anything in breach of his official duty”.

Such an offence attracts a fine not exceeding one million shillings or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years or both upon conviction.

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EACC probes into poll kits procurement Business Daily 18 April 2013:

Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) has begun investigation into procurement of election equipment in line with a Supreme Court recommendation.

EACC in a press statement said the preliminary investigation began after it received an intelligence report that the procurement process was not transparent and may have been flawed.

. . . .

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court called for investigation and possible prosecution of electoral commission officials who may have been involved in impropriety during the procurement of electronic equipment.

A day later, Mr Tobiko [Public Prosecution Keriako Tobiko] sent a letter to EACC instructing it to start investigations, stating the directive arose from Justice Willy Mutunga court’s suggestion.

Evidence supplied by the electoral commission showed that the failure of the Electronic Voter Identification and the Results Transmission Systems mainly arose from misunderstandings and squabbles within the commission during the procurement. 

An internal memo by the commission’s head of IT warned of the risks posed by the kits.

The Treasury was forced to divert cash from other government operations to advance payment for the BVR kits and then obtain cash from the loan to replenish the IEBC account ahead of the General Election. 

Failure to each pact

“The Treasury has fully done its part and it is now up to IEBC to do their work,” the brief said.

The search for cash came after failure to reach an agreement by October 15 as stipulated in the contract with the supplier of the BVR kits, Morpho Canada. According to the Treasury, the government does not have a contract with French firm Safran Morpho as such but with the Canadian government that sought and obtained the BVR supplier, Morpho Canada.

Safran Morpho of France happens to be the subsidiary of Morpho Canada, which was contracted by the Canadian government.

Safran Morpho only made and supplied the equipment from France as a subsidiary of Morpho Canada, which is the actual contracting party in the deal with the governments of Kenya and Canada.

girungu@ke.nationmedia.com

“Kenya: Investigations into IEBC ongoing” The Star via AllAfrica.com, 18 April 2013

The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission has said preliminary investigations into the procurement process undertaken by the IEBC began before the March 4 general elections.

EACC Chief Executive Officer Halakhe Waqo has said the investigations were prompted by information gathered by the commission to the effect that the procurement carried out by the IEBC was not transparent and may have been flawed.

In March 2017, before USAID started releases on my FOIA request on 2013 Kenya election, I called job of new IFES Country Director “the hardest in Kenya” and “probably impossible”

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Read the whole post here:  The hardest job in Kenya . . .

. . . .

Realistically, the job looks impossible as structured, even if there had been adequate preparation time because of the conflicts of interest that USAID has built into the the role.  Compounding the problems from 2007 and 2013, USAID chose to select one entity to manage the inside technical support for the IEBC as per the IFES role since 2001 with the ECK/IIEC/IEBC, to provide voter education and also to lead election observation.  Thus IFES is wearing both “insider” and “outsider” hats at the same time, when the contradictory responsibilities of working with and observing the IEBC are both hugely challenging and vitally important.

Kenya 2013: Redacted reports to USAID suggest the problems with the IEBC acquisition of the Biometric Voter Registration system and the electronic Poll Books fed into the ultimate failure of the USAID-funded IFES Results Transmission System

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Excerpts from the unredacted portions of the Quarterly Reports submitted by CEPPS, the Coalition for Political Party and Process Strengthening, to USAID, released to me last month per my 2015 FOIA request:

The overall goal of this program [USAID Kenya Election and Political Process Strengthening or “KEPPS”] is to improve Kenya’s ability to hold free, fair and peaceful elections through support of the new electoral commission, political parties, civil society and media.

The reports show that key Objectives included to “Strengthen Election Management Body Capacity,” “Enhance Functionality of the Electronic Results Transmission System,” “Further the Transparency and Effectiveness of the Voter Registration Process,” and “Support Credible and Sustainable Monitoring and Observation Efforts”. Vast amounts of the material is redacted on the assertion of alleged FOIA exemption for confidential commercial information submitted by a private person. Redaction is so aggressive as to include in some instances blocking the entire list of Objectives, although the specific items listed above show up elsewhere.

The USAID program was originally funded for $18.5M from the Second Quarter of 2011 through the Second Quarter of 2014 (with another year and roughly $5M added through amendments). The original funding was split among the Consortium for Election and Political Process Strengthening parties: IFES $6M; IRI $1.5M; NDI $11M.

Future Activities:

[Redacted section]

*Assisting the IEBC in procurement of the Electronic Poll Books, specifically technical evaluation of the offers (This was planned for the current quarter but was delayed by IEBC).

*Guiding IEBC in development of procedures and training programs for voter registration workers (Also delayed by IEBC due to delays in procurement of BVR equipment).

*Providing a consultant to serve as assistant to the Chairman of IEBC during the absence of his Personal Assistant who has accepted a fellowship to continue his studies.

The tension among the Objectives involving imbedded support to the IEBC and support for credible monitoring and observation was apparent very early on in the Quarterly Reports.

Planning for the results transmission was derailed to a great extent by the repeated cycles of crisis with regard to the BVR procurement. Meetings scheduled with the IEBC to plan for a system were repeatedly cancelled as a fresh new crisis seemed to occur weekly and even daily.

The risk of failure of the electronic poll books procurement jeopardized the planned use of the poll books to enter results from each polling station, and may necessitate a return to mobile phones. In spite of the increased complexity of conducting elections with six [REDACTED Section].

Objective 5 [of USAID program]: Enhance the functionality of the electronic Results Transmission System.
* Specifications have been developed for using mobile phone handsets as a contingency in case the procurement for electronic poll books fails.

——-

Voter registration timelines announced by the IEBC lapsed repeatedly as a result of delays in the acquisition of BVR kits. Unable to settle on a vendor and a system at the end of August, the IEBC announced that it would instead revert to the manual register for the elections. However, the Cabinet exerted great pressure on the IEBC to retain the use of a BVR system and subsequently took over the tender process, negotiating directly with the Canadian Government for delivery of a BVR system …

The decision of the government to pressure IEBC to proceed with BVR, without regard for delays caused by this decision, and IEBC’s inability to resist that pressure has created a high-risk schedule with no room for slippage in planning for March 4, 2013 elections.

At the same time, IFES was working on “Restoring the eroding levels of public confidence in the integrity and competence of the IEBC” and “Ensuring an efficient and transparent vote count and results transmission system”.

But was not the public ultimately correct to have declining confidence in the integrity and competence of the IEBC, both in the lead up to the vote, and in light of the ultimate failures with both the questionably acquired Poll Books and the Results Transmission System?

———–

Fourth Quarter of 2012:

The Results Transmission System (RTS) solution procurement process was commenced during this Quarter and an in-house RTS was developed and presented to the IEBC as a backup system [REDACTED Section].

Results Transmission: IFES has continued to collaborate closely with the IEBC in the creation of a fully working prototype of the overall Results Transmission System. IFES has also, with approval of the IEBC, agreed to procure a Results Transmission System (RTS) solution and procurement is underway.

———-

For an idea of what was being discussed publicly in the fall of 2012 (when election was originally scheduled) see, i.e.:

August 1, 2012: “Kenyan IEBC drops biometric voter registration after tender controversy“.

October 10, 2012: “Recent Kenya polling points to concern on voter registration, other issues“.

November 27, 2012: “Kenyan diaspora disenfranchised?; Kwamchetsi Makokha raises concern about voter education; IFES seeks consultant“.

The Page of all my posts from the Kenya 2013 election is here.

———-

Ultimately, the Results Transmission System failed in practice. While it was allegedly acquired and deployed with an expectation of reliable performance, it initially displayed unverified and uncertain information that shaped global media reporting of the expected outcome of the eventual vote totals, but was then shut down completely by IEBC Chairman Hassan on the alleged basis of failure due to system overload.

The IEBC went on to announce a final first-round win for the Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto ticket with 50.07 percent of the vote in spite of the lack of the electronic system specified in the Constitution and the lack of a demonstrable manual contingent system and the expelling of party agents and election observers from the national tally process, among other irregularities.

Although polling consistently predicted a runoff in the presidential race, the early broadcast showing numbers from the failed RTS with a large and steady margin with well over 50% for the UhuRuto ticket gave Kenyatta and Ruto and the IEBC substantial practical leverage in opposing civil society litigation (which I supported) seeking an injunction to stop Hassan and the IEBC from announcing results without addressing the RTS failure and shutdown.

This leverage carried over into the Supreme Court as Kenyatta and Ruto and the IEBC defended the alleged 50.07% margin. IFES, according to correspondence and reporting provided at least some support services to the IEBC in litigating alongside Kenyatta and Ruto against Odinga and Musyoka as the opposition candidates and a separate election challenge from civil society. So far as I know the role of IFES in acquiring the RTS with US funds did not come up in the litigation, or in the reports of Election Observers, either those supported by CEPPS under this USAID KEPPS program or otherwise.

Kenya High Court Nairobi AFRICOG lawyer Harun Ndubi press conference 2013 election