Because Kenyans have a short memory span

JUST FOR REMEMBERING. 

 On September 12, 2007, The Daily Nation's headline read, "Extend Kivuitu Tenure, ODM Urges President". After pressure from Rail a Odinga and foreign diplomats, KibaKi reappointed Samuel Kivuitu as Electoral Commission of Kenya chairman. By the end of December 2007, Kenyans were killing each other because Kivuitu 'had rigged' the election in favor of Kibaki. This goes to show how short our memory span is; in this case, 3 months.

After PEV, ECK was disbanded and new outfit formed. In 2009, Raila (then a Prime Minister) managed to have his friend major James Oswago appointed as Chief Executive Officer of the Interim Independent Electoral Commission. Gideon Ochanda who had attempted and failed to get the ODM ticket for the Bondo parliamentary seat was appointed Director of Voter Education. Around that time, malicious emails and new articles targeting the commission chair started to circulate. A scandal ensued that saw Miguna "the Pawn" Miguna sacrificed to save Raila's Queen, Oswago.  

By 2011, CEO Oswago had taken root at the commission and was shopping for an electronic voter registration system. Note that this was just a year before the 2012 election. Once again Raila threw his weight behind the Biometric Voter Register (BRC) promising that is is the panacea to rigging. Those trying to point out that there was not enough time to develop back-end software and build databases were termed as being pro-regime and anti-change. Kenya secured a sh15 billion loan for the elections, chicken was exchanged, ballots and BRV kits were supplied, and Raila lost the election. Uhuru was blamed for the problems with the BRV kits. Again, if Kenyans had a good memory, they would have realized how the mess started and appropriated their blame accordingly.  

Chickengate swallowed the IEBC CEO Oswago. Now some Kenyans want to disband the electoral commission. They also want to spend more billions in securing a new electronic voting system because the previous one had failed to 'elect' their candidate. Soon more chicken will flow, foreign companies will get tenders, and Kenyan grandchildren will be left with a ton of loans to pay. It is the cost of democracy... so they say. I say, it is the price we pay for being too lazy to remember.

I have just copied and pasted because I thought it is relevant to this post-Mwenda Thiribi, Former Commissioner, IEBC