New head of IEBC National Tallying Centre Silas Rotich was arrested for voter bribery
If there is something Wafula Chebukati needed to do, is to put in place a team that is beyond reproach. A clean team. A team that is not tainted by corruption or allegations that they have violated the Constitution or parts of Election Laws. However, the team we have in place is not as clean as we would like it to be. This is because the new head of National Tallying Centre Silas Rotich was arrested on August 8th 2017 on allegations that he was bribing voters.
“ELGEYO-MARAKWET COUNTY official Silas Rotich arrested at a polling centre for allegedly bribing voters; he has been locked at Iten Police Station” is the caption Daily Nation carried on their Facebook Page on August 8th as the election were smoothly going on elsewhere. Since proper news regarding this arrest is generally missing from the mainstream media outlets, it is likely Daily Nation will pull the caption down so I have screenshot the update and shared below.
Although the mainstream media did not carry the story of Silas Rotich being arrested for bribing voters, the political blog site Kenyans.co.ke carried a very short article to the effect that “an employee of Elgeyo Marakwet County Government Silas Rotich has been arrested at Kapteren area for allegedly bribing voters. Police have taken the county official to Iten Police Station. It is still unclear when the official will be taken to court to face his charges. The IEBC has cautioned that no electoral offences would go unpunished”.
It is not just Silas Rotich whose name is tainted in the newly appointed Secretariat. As I mentioned yesterday, NASA supporters already had issues with Silas Rotich, Benard Moseti and Nancy Kariuki. There is little information about Bernard Moseti other than the allegations that he presided over elections in Samburu that had massive rigging.
Nancy Kariuki on the other hand postponed declaring Joho as the winner of Mombasa Gubernatorial race, citing delays in verifying results from various polling stations as the reason for delay. IEBC would clarify on Twitter that their Mombasa RO Nancy Kariuki did not refuse “to give the Governor elect certificate.” Mombasa County was the only County nationwide that experienced unreasonable delays in declaring the Gubernatorial results, forcing Joho to sense foul play.
The two individuals Silas Rotich and Nancy Kariuki could have acted innocently, but their names are already tainted. It would thus be prudent for Chebukati to remove them from the interim IEBC secretariat meant to oversee the fresh Presidential Election.