CALL FOR CONTINUOUS VOTER REGISTRATION

[job]

Folks,

This critical issue of voter registration must not be brushed aside.

As the one-month voter registration exercise continues, there are several pressing questions that Kibaki's government must answer with regard to the ECK-conducted exercise.

First, is the timing. Voter registration needs to be a continuous exercise to accord all eligible citizens their democratic right to vote.

Since 1997, when the Church ( fronted by Mutava Musyimi's NCCK & John Njue's Catholic Episcopal Council ) vigorously championed (on behalf of Kenyans) to have continuous voter registration preceding general elections, nothing has changed in terms of our aspirations. People still wish to have continuous voter registration notwithstanding Musyimi & Njue's recent flip-flopping.

That the Electoral Commission of Kenya, ECK suddenly announces a one-month registration period is sickening. It calls for immediate scrutiny of the very legislation that created ECK. It calls for immediate electoral reforms and review of section 41 of the constitution. The very formula of composition of the ECK commissioners needs to be entrenched in law. Commissioners must not sit in ECK merely at the whims of a sitting President. This is utter mockery of democracy.

Let us smell this mischief and act.

ECK must be given full powers to; conduct continuous voter registration, monitor campaigns for possible fraud and bribery, administer its operations with full financial autonomy- from the consolidated fund, arbitrate and if fit, nullify flawed elections.

Are we to presume that after the month is over then ECK voters register will be closed?

Certainly not, when only 11.6 million citizens, out of a possible 17 million were registered as voters as of 1st August, 2006. Not when the government has just acknowledged that close to 2 million young Kenyans are yet to get their national identity cards,- and just when the government has "suddenly run out of those ID cards".

Issuing national IDs, is the duty of the National Registration Bureau in the Office of the President. Current estimates suggest that more than 1.5 million youth reaching age of maturity are unable to register as voters because they do not have identity cards.

Why? Deliberate disenfrachisement of perceived opposition voters by the government, coupled with gross inefficiency, ineptitude and inertia. There is a definitely high proportion of youths without ID cards in opposition stronghold areas.

Government spokesman Alfred Mutua counters that printing of IDs will be stepped up through outsourcing, to produce some 100,000 to 250,000 cards per week. This translates to less than a million cards by the end of the one-month period. This is the kind of fuzzy math we have to be suspicious about. When simple figures don't seem to add up.

What about other voter registration bottlenecks. How has the ECK addressed the issue of insecurity hampering the process in some parts of the country. What about the obvious issue of lack of awareness in other areas. What communication campaigns has ECK employed to ensure all Kenyans have been given ample time notification of the exercise.

Gerrymandering and Tilting the playing field.

Specific reports from; Gucha, Narok, Kitui, Kisumu, Kericho, Vihiga, Machakos, Homabay, Busia, North Rift, Migori, Kakamega, and parts of NEP and Coast province, indicate that issuance of ID cards has been the single and direct impediment to voter registration. Meanwhile, high school children in Nyandarua, Muranga, and Nyeri districts are currently being issued ID cards to enable them register as voters.

I wonder why Kibaki handlers think they can still hide certain dubious deeds after display of such a "fantastic" record of being repeatedly "caught in the act". LDP chairman David Musila happens to be former PC in Central Province and employed or promoted many of the current administrators serving in the area. Many former (KANU) regime stalwarts sympathetic to the opposition are still serving all across the country, including Central Province and there's little that can be done to change that entirely. They meticulously report what is happening on the ground, including the blatant acts of political gerrymandering and voter registration fraud.

Such futile acts of tilting the political play ground to the government's favour needs to be addressed immediately.

As a matter of fact, the government needs to accord all Kenyan children in high school above the age of eighteen, a chance to get ID cards issued while in school at no charge. This should extend across the entire country continuously until the next general elections.

Brazen acts of making the political play field uneven, are the obvious concerns that worry many wananchi especially since Kibaki began his reckless abuse of office post-referendum.

Are we to presume that anyone who misses this chance to get an ID or register as a voter will be locked out of next year's General Election?

That's the million dollar question. It should not happen.

Even without the deliberate tilts and gerrymandering, no matter how efficient the ECK may be in registering voters, all that effort will be futile if people are locked out because they do not have IDs due to the government's incompetence, corruption and bureaucratic inertia.

Our more immediate concern as a nation should be entrenching voting rights. How do we help those who want to exercise that most basic responsibility, but are disenfranchised through faults created by malicious governments of the day. It must be painful to be denied the right to vote by inefficiency, ineptitude or bureaucratic inertia. It must even be more painful if one is denied that right not just because the authorities are unable to keep up with the demand for IDs, but for something much more insidious,- political mischief.

unedited.
Job

here's an excerpt about some apparent government-choreographed hitches in voter registration in Rift Valley

allafrica.com/stories/200608170409.html

In Nandi North District, registrar of persons Thomas Bongwe said lack of national IDs was frustrating voter registration in the area. Mr Bongwe said they lacked processing materials and films for IDs, adding that since January they had processed 10,000 applications.

District elections coordinator Eric Korir said the registration was still low due to lack of IDs.

Mr Korir appealed to residents to turn up in large numbers and register, saying their target was 6,000 new voters in the district.

In Nandi South District, which targets 4,418 new voters, area registration officer David Sum said 94 new centres had been opened for both Tinderet and Aldai constituencies. However, he said, lack of IDs was an obstacle.In the South Rift, lack of IDs was cited as a setback to voter registration.

ECK commissioner Nathaniel Chebelyon said as result, the region might not achieve its target of more than 100,000 new voters.

[kamalet]

The law provides for continuous registration of voters, and indeed this does go on at District ECK offices throughout the year. ECK however organises an annual campaign for voter registration where registration offices are taken to the grassroots for a month.

It is a shame that ECK does not advertise this fact or even the media who should know better. At the moment, when the campaign is over, there are some enterprising Kenyan politicians who register their supporters (read import!!) when the glare of the public is not there!

[politicalmaniac]

Kamale,
The law provides that the president observes the sprit and letter of the law too!
Didnt the court prohibit kickback1 from issuing title deeds? What did the sloth do? he went ahead anyway and issued them. He must have said to himself 'na mta fanya nini?'

The law is an a$$, a they say!
They executioners of the law (Jugdes etc) were manipulated by the so called 'radical surgery' and the bench infamously cleansed of 'non-conformists'.

This one month window of registration just wont cut it.
What do you to the hundreds of thousands who come of age 3moths or less prior to the election? they dont vote?

[kamalet]

Pmaniac,

Did you actually read what I wrote or what?

Not only does the law provide for continous registration of voters, this process goes on through out the year and is only suspended in the event of a by-election being called!

I do not think ignorance of the law is an excuse in this case to make unwarranted accusations!

[politicalmaniac]

Kamale.
The 'Law' may be one thing.
Its execution/implementation is onother thing all together.
I was just giving an example as to the dichotomous relationship between the spirit and wording of the law, on one hand, and its implentation on the other hand.

[job]

Folks,

I'll repeat my earlier statement that this is quite a fundamental issue that ought to have already been entrenched into our constitution yesterday. As of now we are stuck with short, executive-controlled registration periods for new voters as exemplified here;

www.eck.or.ke/registration_process.htm

The very reason why the issue of continuous voter registration is tricky is primarily due to,....... lack of financial autonomy by ECK. This is one key area of reform that is very urgent.

(By the way, Kamale, I'm not talking about updating a voter card or replacing a lost one which can be done any time at the countrywide ECK district or constituency offices. I'm specifically addressing the issue of new registration or those changing voter centers,.... the exercise ECK recently announced.)

Currently, ECK's activites can be directly subjected to executive control & serial turning off and on, at the executive whim. For voter registration,...money has to be availed by the executive. No money means no registration (for new voters) or technically suspended registration periods (for updates).

ECK (a supposedly independent institution) is forced to operate like some cash-deprived government department,...... through cost-cutting measures & drought periods when most activities grind to a halt, .......waiting for the moment "when funds become available". This in essence negates ECK's very core objectives.

A clever executive will conveniently make funds "unavailable" for most of the time until when they deem it convenient for them. The only cash continuously availed to ECK becomes the basic administrative allocations.

When a by-election is necessitated, then ECK has to beg for funds,.....when general elections approach then it gets even trickier since ECK has to employ several cost cutting measures to ensure the limited resources are used for the multiple & concurrent election-activities.

This simply means that ECK is not an autonomous institution running itself independent from the executive government of the day.

If ECK's allocation of resources to enable it carry its full mandate was independent of the Executive control (eg if they derived funds from the Consolidated fund rather than the Exchequer),......& if continuous registration was supported by LAW ; then new voter registration would probably proceed continuously..........unhampered by State House & Treasury mitigated "lack of funds".

To enforce all policies and objectives under its mandate, ECK is currently in limbo and forced to undertake cost-cutting measures such as "technical" and temporary closures of registration. This even goes against the spirit & wording of the current law as politicalmaniac has argued.

As of now, it is only when funds are availed to ECK by Treasury for such SPECIFIC purposes as new voter registration,.....that Kivuitu begins mobilizing his inputs (labour, public announcements, registration documents, transport etc) & dispatches or activates ECK registration centers.

This time the government specifically allocated a limited amount of shs 500 million for the entire registration exercise,...which means,.....only a 30-day registration period is feasible. By law or not, Kivuitu & ECK is obviously restricted in accomplishing his mission in many ways. See his comments here;

allafrica.com/stories/200608160458.html

Therefore the executive government can decide to avail LIMITED funds for SPECIFIC PERIODS ( eg 30-day periods) for the REGISTRATION EXERCISE. This lack of financial autonomy by ECK
makes it subject to control by the executive.

unedited
Job

BTW on a seperate note, I read about Kibaki allocating SOME 10 Billion for energy in "Coast province". This is what I call dangerous but empty rhetoric.

nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgcontententry.asp?category_id=1&newsid=80484

Does Kibaki think "wenye nchi" dont read between the lines? Or does he think he can specifically fool some people with ease.

"The Government will spend more than Sh10 billion on energy projects at the Coast this year, it was announced yesterday. The projects include expansion of the oil pipeline at a cost of Sh3 billion, improving the Rabai gas turbine at a cost of Sh3.6 billion and revamping the Kipevu power generation plant at Sh2.8 billion. It will also spend Sh1.5 billion on the construction of the liquid petroleum gas plant at Kipevu in Mombasa............."

Is expanding the oil pipeline away from Mombasa into the hinterland synonymous with developing the coast. Is this a national undertaking for the entire country or simply......development to coast province? Who has he given the shs 10 billion worth of contracts (the real beneficiaries of the projects) this time?

Why not put the 10 billion in rural electrification of the coast (households and businesses) instead,.......then APTLY call it -ADDRESSING THE ENERGY NEEDS OF COAST PROVINCE.

[politicalmaniac]

Job
NEW voter registration has onother hurdle.
Obtaining an ID.

We have to streamline voter registration by delinking ECK tot he executive as suggested, and independently funding via a parliamentary budget.
Also why not synchronize voter registration with other activities like ID procurement, and student registration at the begining of the school yr, chiefs bazzars, etc, just to mention a few?

For Incumbets who are intellectually dishonest, politically weak, like the one we have, its not in their interest to usher in real democracy.

[politicalmaniac]

50,000 elegible voters turned away





By KEN LANGAT


ABOUT 50,000 eligible voters had been turned away in three districts of Kericho, Bureti and Bomet during the on going voters registration exercise.

According to Kericho District Electoral Coordinator (DEC), Kathryn Langat who was flanked by her counterparts, Isaac Kipkembu and Rev. Jonathan Rotich of Bomet and Bureti respectively said most of them had no identification cards.

Since the inception of the voters registration exercise Langat revealed that 15,000 eligible voters were turned away in Kericho while in Bomet 20,000 and in Bureti 18,000 were turned away.

Speaking to the Press in Kericho town Langat observed that the affected are youths and old women who were yet to know the value of acquiring IDs and registering as voters.

She attributed large numbers which surpassed their anticipated targets in various stations to the recent creation of more stations in the regions and their intensified door to door operations in the field.

However, she noted most were yet to differentiate between voters cards and IDs due to ignorance and vowed to intensify civic education.

In Kericho district there are 357 poling stations and an additional 119 new stations which are distributed in Ainamoi, Belgut and Kipkelion constituencies. She said 13,809 registered voters were registered within the last three weeks and 19,650 transferred their stations while 229 were deleted since the owners were diseased.

Rev Rotich, said Bureti had a total 222 stations with an additional 101 new stations in Buret and Konoin constituencies. He said 4,231 had so far registered while 13,348 changed stations and 59 were deceased and deleted from the register.

According to Kipkembu, three constituencies of Bomet, Sotik and Chebalungu had managed to register 8,204 new voters in 394 stations with an additional from 128 new stations.

They appealed to those who have not registered to ensure they acquired the document before September, 14 date line and urged them to desist from travelling around with voters cards to avoid losing them.

www.timesnews.co.ke/10sep06/nwsstory/news3.html

[politicalmaniac]

Numerous challenges plague voter registration
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Standard team

Even as the clock ticks towards the General Election, there is rising concern over the huge number of people of voting age who do not have national identity cards, a pre-requisite for voting. Majority of the affected, and therefore who are likely to be disenfranchised, are women and young people.

At the newly established Kanyerus army post near the Kenya/Uganda border in West Pokot, for example, hundreds of women at a makeshift refugee camp risk being disenfranchised for lack of identity cards.

The women fled from their homes after being attacked by an identified people, houses torched and majority, mainly men, killed. "We can now not get out of this camp for fear of being killed too. I narrowly escaped death. I fled with just the clothes I was wearing that day," says Cecilia Lomada, one of the women in the camp.

Her condition, like that of many of those in the camp, is certainly depressing. But more significantly, Cecilia and her ilk in the camp cannot register as voters, first, because of the runway insecurity in the North Rift and northern Kenya and, secondly, because they lost their national identity cards during the raid.

This clearly flies in the face of the Government’s recent assurances and the eventual commencement of the highly publicised voter registration, which targets another five million voters. The emerging challenges, believed to have now spread beyond just the North Rift, are raising fear that the target may not be realised thus disenfranchising a huge chunk of the population.

Scepticism abounds over seriousness of assurances by Government spokesman, Dr Alfred Mutua, that issuance of identity cards has been hastened.

Impeccable sources at the Electoral Commission of Kenya, for example, insist that there is no indication that ID cards are being issued faster now than before.

"Thousands of people are turning up to register but we have to turn them away because they don’t have identity cards," source at the EACT told The Sunday Standard on condition of anonymity.

But Mutua insists that, since May last year, over one million identity cards have been issued. But he says that more than half of these cards are still lying at their places of issuance. The situation would be different, he says, were the applicants to collect these cards.

In Coast Province, for instance, over 87,000 identity cards are yet to be collected. But in addition to the uncollected cards, the Government, says Mutua, has introduced measures that would ensure that more people get new cards.

"The Government is outsourcing the printing of cards, which should allow the printing of up to 100,000 identity cards weekly," he says.

This, he says, should enable some two million people to get identity cards by the end of the year. He estimates that everyone shall have an identity card by the time country goes to elections next year.

It has been argued that the reason the registration of voters is such a sensitive and highly controversial exercise is that it has always been viewed as a potent tool for manipulating the outcome of an election. The interest is even more intense when the exercise takes place when the elections are just around the corner. It is thus easy to understand why the opposition political parties are already crying foul and alleging a scheme to disenfranchise voters from regions perceived to be pro-opposition.

Mwatate Kanu Member of Parliament Marsden Madoka says the party has complained to the Government to no avail. "The General Election will not be a fair exercise because a large majority of Kenyans will not get opportunity to vote," he complains. An Orange Democratic Movement luminary, Nazlin Omar, claims the ruling party wants to manipulate next year’s elections in advance by denying the youth identity cards.

Omar, who is also the national chair of the Muslim Council of Kenya, claims the Muslim community is being discriminated against when it comes to the issuance of IDs.

Women lobby groups are also up in arms. They say that even though women are the majority voters the registration exercise is not sensitive to their needs. Many women, for example, are married before they attain the voting age of 18, which is also when they can be allowed to get IDs. But once married many women are find themselves in situations where they can neither acquire neither ID cards nor vote.

The requirement that a husband, a brother-in-law or a father has to write to the Registrar of Persons for the woman to get an ID is one such an impeding case. The trend has been criticised by women groups as perpetuating inequality, much to the disadvantage of women.

There are also areas like Samburu where people have been displaced as a result of conflict, although the ECK says it has set up mobile registration centres so as to reach even the most remote and marginalised parts of the country.

Although ECK vice chairman Gabriel Mukele says the registration will be distributed fairly across the country to allow as many voters as possible to register in areas like West Pokot and Turkana District, poor infrastructure and insecurity may be a major barrier to success. ECK will be receiving progress reports at the end of every week and from this it will be able to identify the areas where the exercise has not been successful and make the necessary changes, he says.

The scarcity of resources has been a major barrier to achievement of 100 per cent voter registration. ECK officials in Northern Kenya and North Rift and Tana River District have been forced to use public transport.