PREVIEW
New chair with links to President Ruto may face battle over voter registration
The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) finally has new leadership following more than two years of inertia after a court in Nairobi ruled against a petition challenging the appointment of a new six-person team and chairman.
Though the court did rule that President William Ruto had unlawfully approved their appointments by doing so before the petition ruling, hours later on 10 July Ruto re-issued the confirmation notice.
A lawyer and former United Nations Development Programme official, Erastus Edung Ethekon, has been appointed as IEBC chair (AC Vol 66 No 6, The queue to run the Commission). One of the lower profile candidates to apply for the job, Ethekon has links to the President via former Turkana Governor Josphat Nanok, now Ruto’s Deputy Chief of Staff, who he served as County Attorney between 2018 and 2024.
Ethekon is joined by Ann Njeri Nderitu, Moses Alutalala Mukhwana, Mary Karen Sorobit, Hassan Noor Hassan, Francis Odhiambo Aduol and Fahima Araphat Abdallah, who have all been appointed as commissioners with six-year terms.
IEBC has been without a chair since Wafula Chebukati’s retirement in 2023. Chebukati played a decisive role in the 2022 elections, overruling a majority of IEBC commissioners to declare Ruto as the winner over Raila Odinga (AC Vol 63 No 17, Election chief proclaims Ruto victory but most of his commissioners dispute it).
The IEBC’s reputation was battered by accusations of partisanship against both Chebukati and the rival pro-Odinga faction who were sacked by Ruto in 2023, and is in poor shape ahead of the next elections in August 2027. Attempts to reach a cross-party consensus on future audits of the IEBC and its composition have been rendered moot by Odinga’s decision to allow his Orange Democratic Movement to be co-opted into Ruto’s government (AC Vol 65 No 7, Re-opening the commission's wounds).
Voter registration, in particular, is set to be the hottest topic challenging the IEBC and its public credibility. However, the commission has seen hefty budget cuts since 2022, leaving it without the resources to conduct registration or even to pay its legal bills from court cases that followed the 2022 polls.
Last week, reports circulated on social media claiming that the commission planned to remove over two million ghost voters from the register ahead of 2027. Though these have been dismissed as fake news by Ethekon, they will carry weight among Kenyans.
Should the Gen Z protest movement seek to turn its popular support into votes, the registration of millions of young Kenyans will be crucial. Turnout among Kenyans aged 30 or below was the lowest among all demographics in 2022. There is, however, little incentive for the Ruto-Odinga government to fund voter registration that may result in them losing at the polls.
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