IEBC to approve parties with compliant nomination rules in 2 weeks » Capital News

NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec 1 – The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) on Wednesday announced it was in the process of reviewing resubmitted political parties’ nomination rules and is set to roll out compliance certificates within two weeks.

IEBC Chairperson Wafula Chebukati revealed that a total of 89 parties had submitted their reviewed nomination rules in line with guidelines set out by the commission. Parties which fail to realign their rules risk being locked out of the 2022 General Election.

IEBC had previously set October 18 as the deadline for submission of nomination rules but extended the deadline to November 16 for non-compliant parties to resubmit their rules.

“In accordance with Article 88 4(d) of the constitution and section 27 of the Elections act, the commission had set October 18 to be the deadline of submission. The commission reviewed and determined that none of the political parties had fully complied with the requirement of the law. There were various degrees of compliance between 30 – 80 percent thus parties were required to revise their rules and resubmit them not later than November 16,” Chebukati said.

He noted that compliance certificates would only be awarded to parties whose rules conform to the Constitution, the Elections Act, the Political Parties Act, the Elections Regulations 2017, and be in accordance with the Party’s Constitution.

“We set up a desk at the commission and we assisted political parties to review the rules and as of now a total of 89 parties have submitted their nomination rules and the commission is currently reviewing them. The commission in due course shall issue the certificate of compliance to compliant parties and this should be done in the next one or two weeks,” Chebukati said.

On October 15, the commission released the new party nomination guidelines for the party primaries scheduled to take place between January and May 26, 2022.

The guidelines stipulated that party rules should prescribe the process by which political outfits nominate candidates in order to ensure that the two-thirds gender rule is complied with.

The commission maintained that the guidelines emanated from a High Court ruling that directed the agency to devise administrative mechanisms to ensure gender parity is realized by political parties during nominations for parliamentary elections.