President Uhuru Kenyatta has named a seven-member selection panel to recruit four members of the electoral commission, the final step in the filling of the vacancies in the agency.
The panel now has seven days within which to invite applications from qualified persons, after which it will publish the names of the applicants in the Kenya Gazette, two newspapers of national circulation as well as in the Parliamentary Service Commission (PSC) website.
Treasury has already earmarked Sh84.5 million for the process, with the first business of the panel being to choose its chairperson and vice chairperson.
The members of the selection panel were chosen by the PSC, the Law Society of Kenya (LSK) and the Inter-Religious Council of Kenya.
Those picked by the PSC in the selection panel are Dr Elizabeth Muli, a commercial law lecturer at the University of Nairobi, Ms Elizabeth Odundo Meyo, the commissioner for domestic taxes at the Kenya Revenue Authority as well as advocate Gideon Solonka, and author James Awori Achoka.
LSK has nominated Ms Dorothy Kimengech, while the Inter-religious Council will be represented by its chairman Rev Joseph Mutie and Dr Faurdin Suleman Abdalla, who sits in the IRC executive board.
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The choice of Ms Kimengech as the LSK representative in the panel is bound to bring legal issues given the disagreement between the society's president Nelson Havi and chief executive officer Mercy Wambua.
While Mr Havi nominated lawyer Morris Kimuli for the job, Ms Wambua sent a different letter nominating Ms Kimengech.
Mr Havi had warned that should the PSC, which was receiving the names from the other bodies and forwarding them to the President, pick Ms Kimengech over his choice of Mr Kimuli, he will head to court.
“…Please confirm that the name of Kimuli Morris will be transmitted to the President and that the Parliamentary Service commission will not be complicit in the nefarious scheme by Ms Dorothy Jemator, Mercy Wambua and their Principals. The Law Society of Kenya will take legal action to challenge any act by the commission inconsistent with the position set out herein,” Mr Havi said in an April 22 letter.
Mr Havi argued that Ms Kimengech was ineligible to serve as a member of the selection panel citing what he said was her present membership in two tribunals.
Mr Havi told the PSC that Ms Kimengech was a member of both the HIV/Aids tribunal and the Energy and Petroleum Tribunal since May 2019 and May 2020, respectively, a position he says locks the advocate out of consideration for the selection panel job.
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But Ms Wambua has defended the choice of Ms Kimengech as the society's pick for the panel, saying Mr Havi's choice of Mr Kimuli had violated its regulations and was therefore "dubious, illegal and dead on arrival."
The formation of the selection panel takes the last step to filling the vacancies in the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) which have been vacant for as long as three years.
The vacancies occurred following the resignation of Commissioner Roselyne Akombe in October 2017, followed by the joint resignation of Connie Nkatha Maina, Dr Paul Kurgat and Margaret Mwachanya in April 2018.
