EC boss explains election fees

ELECTORAL commissioner Simon Sinai says election petition fees for General Election 2022 (GE22) are justified compared with the cost of holding by-elections.
“For 2012, there were 105 election petition cases and if the Electoral Commission (EC) opted not to defend those cases in court, it would have cost the State K630 million to conduct by-elections in all of the disputed seats,” he said.
“Likewise, if the commission did not defend the GE22 petition cases currently before court, we would need over K612 million to conduct by-elections.
“That is how expensive it is to conduct elections in this country.”
Sinai said costs for general elections were based on the number of petitions that filed after elections and this had risen between the last three elections.
“There has been a significant increases in election petition cases in the past three general elections (2012, 2017, 2022), thus increasing the cost of petitions,” he said.
“We have tried to work with the State Solicitor’s office in the previous elections to manage the issue of costs but the number of election petition cases increased over that period and we could not deliver.”
Sinai said it cost the State approximately between K500,000 to K700,000 to run a single petition case, from pre-trial conference to competency then to full trial and decision.
The decision to engage private law firms to defend the commission on petitions could save the State about K1.5 billion, which could in turn be used to conduct by-elections.
“It would have cost the State a total of K1.7 billion to conduct separate by-elections for the last three general elections, while the decision to defend petition matters in court would cost the State nearly K200 million over the same period,” he said.
Sinai said while handling election petition cases was expensive, running by-elections would cost more than K6 million per electorate.
This followed the announcement Sinai made last week that the EC would need K150 million in legal fees for election petition cases.