IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati. Peter Kagwanja says he is presiding over 'a toothless bulldog'. [Photo: softkenya.co.ke]As currently constituted, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) can neither defend its independence nor conduct an election that the Supreme Court can give a clean bill of health to.

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Political analyst Prof Peter Kagwanja says that the IEBC has been unable to assert its independence, leaving it at 'ground zero of cut-throat elite power tussles and political machinations'.

"The disarray and mayhem that rocked Kenya’s electoral commission after the September 1, 2017 Supreme Court judgment that controversially overturned President Uhuru Kenyatta’s victory in the August 8 election has exposed the tantalising liberal idea of 'independent' electoral institutions as tragic, shambolic and a threat to the stability of fragile states," Kagwanja writes on this week's Sunday Nation.

He adds: "The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) is now a classic textbook case of chronic failure by its election managers to defend the constitutionally guaranteed independence and to kowtow to the debilitating demands and interests of the political class."

Kagwanja goes on to dismiss Raila Odinga's led NASA coalition as one that only pays lip-service to the 'independence' of the electoral management body.

"Nasa has embarked on fierce lawfare in the form of numerous ruinous court cases to undermine the constitutional independence and autonomy of IEBC and exercise undue influence on its policy choices and direction, especially in staffing, procurement of services, finance and election implementation," Kagwanja adds in his opinion piece.

The former President Mwai Kibaki adviser concludes by asserting that 'Kenya is paying for the sins and excesses of its multi-party neo-liberals.'

"After the country’s return to multi-party democracy, these people pushed us too far into a fictitious form of 'independence' of the electoral commission that even the world’s most advanced democracies have not dared to adopt." he says.