Drastic proposals for elections calendar

In an attempt to make elections transparent and efficient, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has drafted amendments to the country’s laws, and even to the Constitution.

This is also meant to deflect blame for alleged mishandling of last year’s General Election.

The legal answer to queries of inefficiency seems to be the easy way out for the besieged IEBC, at a time the Opposition is campaigning for its disbandment ahead of 2017 polls.

In an internal audit report for the March 2013 polls, IEBC has asked that the elections for the six elective seats be staggered.

The commission also wants the period for determination of presidential election petitions be increased from 14 to 30 days and wants Parliament to enact a law blocking MPs from “interfering” with laws that deal with elections “so close” to the polls.

In the 2013 elections, 12,776 people vied for the 1,882 seats; that is the presidency, MPs, governor, senator, woman representative and MCAs.

On average it took a person between six and 15 minutes to vote. It is for that reason that IEBC wants the polls held on different dates.

Some of the amendments will require ratification through a referendum.

 PROPOSE REMEDIES

The commission has also made a curious plea for a “Commission of Inquiry” to look into how and why the results transmission system, from the grassroots to the national tallying centre, failed in the 2013 General Election.

The proposed inquiry is supposed to diagnose the failures and propose remedies in readiness for the August 2017 elections.

IEBC also wants the Elections Act and the Political Parties Act reviewed to curb party hopping and to find an agreed way to calculate the win for a presidential candidate who meets the 50 per cent plus one, threshold.

In their report, the commissioners said they want clarity on whether to use all votes cast or if they should just stick to “valid votes cast”.

The electoral body also wants the election rules amended to allow returning officers to have the powers to correct “glaring errors” in the statutory forms, as long as the officers countersign the corrections that they make.

The Parliamentary Justice and Legal Affairs Committee and IEBC will go for a retreat after the National Assembly resumes its sittings on October 14 to discuss the amendments.

Committee chairman Samuel Chepkonga (Ainabkoi), and his deputy Priscilla Nyokabi (Nyeri) yesterday told The Standard that they had not seen the amendments but had already agreed to hold a meeting with the commission to discuss legislation.

“We intend to have a retreat to discuss the proposals when they are ready,” Mr Chepkonga said.

The electoral body is yet to release the Post-Election Evaluation Report on the March 4, 2013 General Elections dated July 2014 to the public.

IEBC also wants the Political Parties Act amended so that the electora body can have statutory muscle to take over party primaries.

The commission says it wants to “lobby Parliament to enact a law to empower IEBC to exercise oversight over party primaries, and deal with the political parties that fail to promote free and fair nominations of candidates or which fail to adhere to national values and principles as provided for in the Constitution”.

  BACK-UP PLAN

IEBC also wants to stop party leaders from trying to find a back-up plan in the list for nominated candidates, because they say “a name of a contestant should not appear on the party list”.

The commission wants Parliament to “provide a template that will dictate to parties the format for identifying and nominating marginalised persons and persons with disability”.

The electoral body also wants the Judiciary tamed so that election petitions are “conclusively” determined at the Court of Appeal.

It has also asked the Judiciary to rein in judges to stop them from issuing orders to change party lists “outside the statutory period”.

The commission wants the Elections Act amended to provide for the qualifications of a governor and a deputy governor.

“There is  need to clarify the academic qualifications required for candidacy as the lack of proper definition of the term ‘post-secondary’ qualification raised confusion,” the commission said in another internal document titled 2013 General Election: National Stakeholders Evaluation Workshop.

The rules of the Supreme Court will also have to be reviewed if IEBC goes ahead and asks the President of the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Willy Mutunga to make changes so that the rules make it “efficient” to deal with election petitions.

The commission also wants harmony between its investigatory and prosecutorial powers and those of the Director of Public Prosecutions Keriako Tobiko.

The DPP has the constitutional jurisdiction over all prosecutions in the country but IEBC wants some of those powers to help it deal with electoral offences.

Ms Nyokabi said the push by IEBC to stagger the polls so that the President, MPs and Senators are elected separately from governors, and MCAs, is unworkable.

“IEBC is just looking for a way to make it easier for themselves to carry out elections. But we should know that if we stagger the elections, then it means that nothing else will happen in this country, because we will always be on the campaign trail,” said Nyokabi in an interview with The Standard.

 ELECTIVE POSTS

“You cannot say that a President and MPs will just sit and watch people elect governors. They will join. It is better we elect all the leaders once, and forget about it,” the Nyeri County woman representative said.

“The increased number of elective posts resulted in increased assistance to voters, led to fatigued poll officials and late transmission of results,” the document on 2013 General Election: National Stakeholders Evaluation Workshop reads in part.

But to Nyokabi said IEBC has to work on the budget and tighten the registration of voters rules.

Contacted for comment, IEBC Communications Manager Tabitha Mutemi denied knowledge of the evaluation report, saying some issues had been raised in the stakeholders workshop held earlier in the month. “The commission will only have a final report once issues raised by elections stakeholders have been compiled and adopted in the final report,” she said.