By Humphrey Malalo and George Obulutsa
NAIROBI (Reuters) -Kenya swore in a group of top electoral officials on Friday, hours after their approval by President William Ruto, filling essential positions which had long been left vacant in a country with a long history of contentious and often violent elections.
The chairperson and six commissioners, who will serve for six years, took their oaths at a ceremony overseen by Chief Justice Martha Koome, local broadcast footage showed.
“You are taking office at a time when our nation is undergoing a period of great reckoning, a moment when Kenyans, especially our young people, are expressing discontent, are expressing frustrations with public institutions,” Koome said.
The East African nation’s next general election will be held in 2027, but Ruto is already under pressure from street protests led by young people dissatisfied with high living costs, corruption and police brutality.
The speedy appointment of electoral officials was one of the rallying cries during protests last year.
Chairperson Erastus Ethekon is a human rights lawyer and previously worked as Turkana County’s top legal adviser. He has also worked with the United Nations Development Programme and the U.N. Resident Coordinator in Kenya.
“My first and foremost loyalty is to the people of Kenya who hold the sovereign power,” Ethekon said after being sworn in.
“I wish to assure Kenyans that their voices will not only be heard, but they will also count during the coming elections.”
Ruto suspended four election commissioners in December 2022 after they rejected his victory in elections held earlier that year. The dispute proceeded to the Supreme Court, which upheld Ruto’s win and rejected the commissioners’ arguments that the vote-tallying process had been opaque.
The appointment of new election commissioners had been delayed in part due to several legal petitions, which a high court dismissed on Thursday.
(Reporting by George Obulutsa; Editing by Ammu Kannampilly, Joe Bavier and Hugh Lawson)
