A senior member of Kenya’s electoral commission resigned on Wednesday, saying she did not want to be “party to such a mockery to electoral integrity”, AFP reported. The commission is under political siege, and cannot conduct a credible presidential election on October 26, Roselyn Akombe (pictured above) said.

Akombe told the BBC she has fled to New York as she feared for her life and had received threats in Kenya. “I have never felt the kind of fear that I felt in my own country,” she said.

A re-election is scheduled for October 26 after the Kenyan Supreme Court rejected the results of the August presidential election that declared incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta the winner. On September 1, the top court said there were irregularities in the election proceedings and that a fresh poll should be held within 60 days.

Last week, Opposition leader Raila Odinga pulled out of the re-election, saying the re-election would be even worse than the first one.

Akombe told BBC: “I have tried the best I could do given the circumstances. Sometimes, you walk away, especially when lives are at stake. The commission has become a party to the current crisis. The commission is under siege.”

Protests had erupted in the Kenyan city of Kisumu and slums around the capital Nairobi following Kenyatta’s victory on August 11. The Opposition, led by Odinga, had rejected the August 8 election as a “charade”. Odinga alleged that the election commission’s IT system had been tampered with.