Economy

IEBC time-barred in bid to cap 2022 election funding

chebukati

Wafula Chebukati, chairman Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission. FILE PHOTO | NMG

Presidential aspirants and other political candidates will not be restricted on the amount of cash they can splash in the 2022 polls after the electoral agency was time-barred in tabling rules setting caps on election campaign expenditure.

Parliament last evening said the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) was time-barred in tabling the Draft Election Campaign Financing Regulations 2020.

The regulations seek to enforce a cap and regulate the amount of money a political party or candidate will spend on elections or referendum campaigns.

The IEBC is required under Section 5 of the Election Campaign Financing Act 2013 to make rules, which must be submitted to Parliament for approval at least 12 months before the General Election.

Kenya goes to the General Election on August 9, 2022. The Draft Election Campaign Financing Regulations 2020 must have been passed on or before August 9, 2021.

The rules seek to provide for the regulation, expenditure and accountability of funds during elections and referendum campaigns.

The IEBC shall, at least three months before an election, publish in the Kenya Gazette total spending limits a candidate or political party contesting for an elective post may spend during the elections campaign period.

The commission is also required to set out the limit of contributions that a candidate, a political party or a referendum committee may receive from a single source, the limit of a loan that they may receive and the limit of media coverage.

“It is important that everybody out there know that it is the IEBC and not Parliament that has sat on its laurels. They have brought them today said Speaker Justin Muturi.

“Since they come today, House can’t pass these regulations by Monday, August 9, 2021. I’m not saying much…you make the law; you can even unmake this one as was the case in 2017 when the law was deferred.”