Electoral agency should put its house in order

With only 49 days remaining to the August general election, the over 22 million registered voters, who are waiting to cast their ballot, are being treated to interesting electoral political circus which is tainting the image of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC).

Right from clearing of presidential candidates and other political aspirants to the demonstration of how transmission of election results will be done, voters have been left with more questions than answers.

But the elephant in the room for the IEBC and Kenyans at large is the voters’ register. The register has over a million-plus people who ought not to be in that register. Some voters have passed on while others used the wrong documents for registration. It is upon the IEBC and the auditing firms to give the country a clean register.

I am not doubting the capability of the IEBC, but what we the electorate want to see are the individuals charged with managing the much-awaited elections doing their work thoroughly. All we want are free, fair, credible and verifiable elections.

Questions as to whether the country has a clean register will stop only when the IEBC officials do their work right.

The commission plans to go digital and might not have printed voter registers at polling stations. But knowing very well the challenges that the digital process might face; from slow internet to power blackouts, then it is justifiable for registered voters to argue that the commission wants to make what is supposed to be a transparent process opaque.

Whether the commission decides to fully go digital with the register, l do believe it is important for it to have some sort of back-up. Why? IEBC has said that more than one thousand polling stations have not 3G and 4G network this means that about 800,000 voters could have issues being identified.

Then there are the people who do hard manual jobs whose finger prints might not be easily identifiable with the digital gadgets, how will they vote in the absence of a manual process? The commission must reassure Kenyans that in case there are such challenges, they will have a way of dealing with them.

The main issue with the register is mistrust. Recently Deputy President William Ruto, who is also Kenya Kwanza presidential candidate, alleged that he had information that about one million voters from his strongholds have been struck off the register. The question, however, is how did he know that?

On the other hand, Azimio la Umoja presidential candidate Raila Odinga while handing over his credentials to IEBC for clearance raised pertinent questions which somehow hinted that he was not sure whether the agency will conduct the elections in a transparent and acceptable manner. IEBC must prove to all and sundry that it’s up to the task in the remaining short period.

Ms Czeda is a KTN news-anchor-cum reporter. bczeda@standardmedia.co.ke