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Open in new tab Kura Yangu Sauti Yangu press statement on irreducible minimums
Yesterday, the country woke up to news that the legislature intends to institute amendments to legislation affecting the conduct of elections, ahead of the fresh presidential election now slated for 26th October. The publication period of the proposed laws was truncated, with the result that these were tabled for the first reading, in both the Senate and the National Assembly, on the same day that they were published.
The rushed manner, in which the proposed laws are being processed, directly undermines the spirit of bipartisanship, further increasing political tensions in the country, which were already heavy high. The rationale for the laws remains poorly articulated, and media reports have also made it clear that the IEBC, a target of these changes, has not been consulted.
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Kura Yangu Sauti Yangu press statement on supreme court ruling
President Uhuru Kenyatta’s subsequent denigration of the Supreme Court in the aftermath of its decision, which has gone as far as referring to the judges as crooks, and threatening to “fix them” after 60 days, is unfortunate in the extreme and must be condemned as an attempt to seat impunity within our constitutional democracy. Leaders in the Jubilee Party have taken his cue to also insult, threaten and disrespect the Judiciary. These statements signal a tendency toward authoritarian rule that must be resisted.
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Why are the Kenyan Elections in dispute?
The dispute is over presidential results that were verbally announced as final on August 11th, and the numbers and documentation released on the website of the electoral board.
Ten days after the announcement, documentation on the website portal of the IEBC (Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission) remains incomplete and numbers are wildly contradictory.
The public expectation, created by the IEBC itself, was that presidential results would not and could not be announced without supporting documentation displayed on the website.
Ezra Chiloba, the electoral board CEO, said during a simulation exercise of the electronic results transmission on August 2nd, that Kenyans would have real time access and be able to develop real time tallies of the polls. He reassured media and the public in general they would have “unfettered access to all the results from all the polling stations” as the results came in1. Despite these assurances, parallel tallying efforts experienced severer pressure from the state throughout the election cycle.
According to the IEBC, the electronic transmission system was configured so that the ‘submit’ button could only show after a full entry of data had been made, which included the scanned copy of the declaration form from the polling station. The numbers and the scanned images would be digitally transmitted simultaneously by the electronic system known as the Kenya Integrated Elections Management System, or KIEMS. IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati explicitly stated that “the primary document and what [IEBC] will use as the final result- is the scanned document”
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Where Is Our Vote?
Civil society exists to promote and protect people’s rights, in accordance with our Constitution and laws, as well as regional and international law. In the context of elections, we work to ensure that every eligible person’s right to vote, and for our vote to count, is honoured. We will continue to do so.
In the run-up to August 8, 2017, we published and disseminated many reports to express the public interest in the electoral process, replete with recommendations on what relevant public bodies, especially the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), are required by our Constitution and laws to do to ensure our right to vote—and for our vote to count.
Kenya’s 2017 elections were meant to be a step forward in our country’s democracy, anchored in our new, progressive Constitution. They were also meant to assert and maintain our country’s regional leadership and be a point of reference in a sub-region where recent elections have been so contested.
As we near completion, there is need to take stock of what the elections have achieved against those aims—our right to vote, for our vote to count and our role as a sub-regional anchor state.
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Kura Yangu Sauti Yangu update on the election process so far
This is the third briefing by the Kura Yangu Sauti Yangu coalition on the election process so far. This briefing is based on our assessment and understanding of the progress that has been made in tallying the presidential election results. We appreciate the confirmation from the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) that it will only make a final declaration of outcomes based on the law—using publicly accessible and verifiable Forms 34A and 34B. However, to date, the IEBC has only uploaded a few Forms 34A on the public portal. These are faint and illegible, with some neither signed nor stamped by Presiding Officers in accordance with the law.
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Kura Yangu Sauti Yangu press statement on IEBC's provisional results
After an orderly voting process, Kenya’s 2017 elections has degenerated into a now familiar problem. The announcement of completely unverifiable results will, if unaddressed, create serious political instability.
The primary problem is the announcement of results. The manner in which results are to be handled was the subject of political negotiations that led to amendments to the Elections Act late last year. In accordance with the amendment, the IEBC is required to transmit, in the prescribed form—that is, Form 34—tabulated results from a polling station to the Constituency Tallying Centre and the National Tallying Centre. The law also requires that the IEBC shall publish the Form 34As on its online portal.
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Kura Yangu Sauti Yangu preliminary press statement on the ongoing voting process
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Kura Yangu Sauti Yangu Statement on NASA Raid
Kura Yangu Sauti Yangu has noted reports that suspected security officials last night raided an office that serves as a tallying centre for the opposition, NASA coalition. There was some confusion as to what actually happened, because of conflicting media reports. The initial report was that a raid by suspected police officers at the tallying centre situated at Sifa House was underway. However, this report was soon followed by another which indicated that the first report was a hoax as no raid was underway at the building in question.
This report was soon followed by a detailed statement issued in the name of Dennis Onyango, who has been a long-term spokesman for NASA presidential candidate which asserted that a raid had indeed taken place. This morning, leaders of the NASA coalition invited the media to a different location in Nairobi, whose premises said to be the venue of a tallying centre appeared vandalised.
At a major public rally to conclude the campaign process that has been going on ahead of the polling on 8th August, NASA repeated the claim about the raid on its premises and read out the names of five police officers that they said were part of a larger group of police officers that carried out the raid. All those involved were said to have been wearing hoods, presumably to conceal their identities. At the NASA rally, the registration number of a car that had allegedly been used in the raid was also provided.
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The 2017 Kenyan Election: Pre-Election Statement Kura Yangu, Sauti Yangu 4 August 2017
On a technical level, KYSY has identified and assessed problems with legal reform, compressed timelines, procurement processes, voter registration and the Register of Voters, party primaries,lack of clarity with regard to laws and regulations and rising insecurity. The Kenyan State’s increasing attempts to unconstitutionally control and restrict public questioning of electoral preparedness as well as public scrutiny of the electoral process reveals a worrying lack of respect for the sovereignty of the voter. Many of these problems were evident in 2013, and the lack of progress made in addressing them demonstrates the IEBC’s and parliament’s lack of will to learn from the past.
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