Nearly 48 hours after DCI boss George Kinoti gave a blow-by-blow account of intrigues that punctuated the arrest of three Venezuelans, IEBC boss Wafula Chebukati has seemingly filed a response.
In a letter seen by Nairobi Leo on Tuesday, Chebukati ostensibly chose to clarify one thing; the role of stickers in the coming elections.
This comes after the three Venezuelans were arrested while in possession of election stickers for some 10 select counties in the country.
The three are Jose Comargo Gregorio, Joel Gustavo Rodriguez Garcia and Salvador Javier Sosa Suarez.
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Their possession of stickers for some select counties sparked questions among Kenyans who raised doubt about the credibility of the electoral processes.
But in a move aimed at clearing the air, Chebukati now says stickers are not strategic election materials.
He explained that the role of the stickers was captured in a gazette notice dated July 1st, 2022, and was to simply help in the identification.
"For easy identification of the KIEMS kits, Smartmatic is required to provide stickers to aid labelling each of the kits for purposes of packaging and dispatch to all polling stations.
"The stickers contain information on the polling station, polling centre, ward, constituency, and county as well as a unique barcode," the IEBC boss said in a statement.
Though Chebukati made no reference to Kinoti's Sunday statement, his clarification comes hot on the heels of the heated debate DCI's detailed press release elicited.
The IEBC boss, however, did not respond to numerous concerns raised by the DCI boss and he instead opted to clarify how the IEBC ended up contracting Smartmatic Holdings limited for the August elections.
He explained that all legal processes were followed and that the tender was competitively won.
