IEBC to auction politicians’ property over unpaid election petition costs

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) is preparing to auction properties belonging to several politicians who lost their election petitions.

This move comes after the commission was awarded Sh400 million in court fees related to unsuccessful petitions filed to contest election results in 2013 and 2017.

These politicians had vied for various seats, including gubernatorial, parliamentary, and Senate positions, but failed to overturn the IEBC’s declared results.

The commission is now enlisting the services of auctioneers to recover the Sh400 million from these politicians.

This amount was flagged by Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu and is to be recovered from the Sh1 million security deposits that the petitioners had paid in court.

IEBC Chief Executive Officer Hussein Marjan informed the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the National Assembly this week that the commission turned to auctioneers after facing challenges with the recovery process.

These difficulties included limited access to security deposits, delays in execution, stays on court orders by appealing petitioners, and even the absence of judgment debtors.

“We are currently in the process of procuring auctioneers to recover the monies owed to the commission as awarded by the court in election petition cases that were ruled in our favour,” Marjan told the committee.

He added that the auctioneers would be compensated with a percentage of the amount they manage to collect, approximately 1.5 per cent.

Marjan explained that the commission had put in significant effort to recover the funds through lawyers, but their efforts had not yielded the desired results.

The IEBC had managed to collect only Sh6.8 million out of the more than Sh400 million owed to it.

The challenges faced by the lawyers also included slowness in pursuing costs, delays in taxation, and the presence of surrogate litigants who filed petitions on behalf of the politicians to shield them from paying the awarded costs.

The IEBC’s decision to involve auctioneers was made following advice from the Office of the Attorney-General, and the commission hopes this approach will be more effective in recovering the outstanding amounts.

On September 16, 2022, Chief Justice Martha Koome appointed 104 Judges and Magistrates to hear and determine 123 election petitions arising from the August 9 General Election.

The number of election petitions was down from 388 disputes filed after the 2017 General Election and 188 in the 2013 elections.

Twelve of the petitions relate to governorship elections and two senatorial.

Four petitions involved the county woman representative elections, 28 for the Member of National Assembly and 77 for the Member of County Assembly.