IEBC must rethink BVR kit distribution formula

When you label an exercise “Mass Voter Registration” one naturally expects you to go for the masses, unless you are the IEBC. Nay, theirs is a “Geographical Distribution of Equipment” drive where the masses are ignored and land mass favoured. It’s called turning logic on its head.

Given the artificial scarcity of resources at the IEBC, it would only be practical to concentrate the greatest number of kits in areas with the greatest unregistered but eligible population. Even the national government does not build infrastructure based on universal access but rather economic sense.

In the IEBC’s own words, “the commission had to strike a balance between all possible variables in the distribution of the kits. Of higher concern was how much time it will take to move one kit from one place to the other or how far a potential voter will have to travel to reach a kit (Registration Centre).” We therefore have many kits chasing a disproportionate number of votes. How then this is called a mass voter registration eludes me.

The fixation with landmass has resulted in truly bizarre situations; Bomet County where the IEBC target for registration is a paltry 7,295 potential voters received 100 kits. By the IEBC’s own claim that each kit can register 150 people per day, with 100 kits the commission could in theory be done with registration in Bomet in half a day! Vihiga, with a target of 211,289 potential new voters, got 52 kits. Go figure! For the avoidance of doubt, these are not my figures but those supplied by the Commission itself at the meeting with CORD leaders on Tuesday. It would be unfair if I did not disclose that the Commission informed us that these figures are “continually being corrected”, whatever that means.

I have in the past pointed out the duplicity of the IEBC which on one hand submits a Sh2 billion budget to the government, gets only a quarter of that amount yet claims that it is all set to proceed along with the exercise.

Yet the underlying question must be how come the government fails to allocate sufficient resources to the IEBC even as money is available to double the allocation to the National Youth Service for instance? How can a country with a trillion shilling budget fail to allocate Sh2 billion for such an important exercise? It is clearly not a lack of money but a lack of goodwill and the presence of a malevolent scheme to make sure that elections remain nothing more than tribal headcounts. If the government truly believes in democracy, why be afraid of equitable voter registration? Why not let voters register and then battle to convince them to vote one way or the other? The current brazen attempt to bottleneck registration in CORD strongholds is a concession that Jubilee cannot win over voters based on argument, necessitating preemptive manipulation of the next General Election.

When you find yourself in a country that needs donor aid to run elections, it’s the surest sign you are in the Third World. It’s tragic that those ensure we remain a Third World country make it almost impossible for us to vote them out of office because they control the budgets of the elections body and also possess power to appoint lackeys to these bodies.

I have a strong suspicion that the continued eagerness of the IEBC to make do on a shoestring budget is not borne out of patriotism. Why would a responsible and independent body be so agog to run substandard exercises occasioned by underfunding? We know full well that funds are available at Treasury. One can only conclude that the sustained craving of the commission to operate when it is impoverished must be motivated by unseen benefit to those who want things that way and of course to the Commission.