Kenya's electoral commission appoints new staff

Reshuffle follows call for changes by Odinga ahead of 17 October election re-run.
Kenya's Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has appointed new additional staff to its top management team ahead of the country's repeat presidential election on 17 October.
The IEBC reshuffle came after Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga said his National Super Alliance (NASA) would not participate in the election re-run unless it was given "legal and constitutional" guarantees. However it is in unclear if the IEBC changes were a direct result of Odinga's intervention.
Odinga had demanded the removal of top IEBC members before he allowed his name to go forward in the presidential re-run against incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta who had been declared the winner in the contentious 8 August poll.
The supreme court subsequently made the surprise decision to invalidate the election result, following an appeal from Odinga who alleged irregularities by the electoral commission.
In the election on 8 August Odinga lost by 1.4 million votes to Kenyatta, of the multi-party Jubilee Alliance, who received 54 per cent of the vote.
Foreign missions tasked with observing the election also faced criticism from Odinga who alleged that they moved too quickly to "sanitise fraud" in their willingness to favour the perceived stability associated with Kenyatta. Experts predict the cost of re-running the election will be almost $100 million.