Cord in push for fresh registration of voters

Coalition for Reforms and Democracy is demanding fresh registration of all Kenyans eligible to vote as part of election reforms.

However, this may run into trouble as the ruling Jubilee alliance insists that the current register can be cleaned up.

On Thursday, Cord was surprisingly vague in its response when the question on whether a new register is needed was put to them at their meeting with the joint select committee.

But a member of the committee from their side confirmed that having a new voters’ roll is among the reforms they would be pushing for when the presentations end and they get down to the real work of putting together a report for Parliament. This was also evident in Cord’s 39-page  memorandum.

Jubilee on the other hand said: “The existing voter register must be maintained and can only be built on through continuous registration. We must be clear that the register has absolute integrity even as it is.”

Using the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission’s own internal audits, Cord argued that the commission admitted it did not know the total number of voters, that some were left out, that there was more than the final register ...and that some data was lost in transmission to Nairobi.

“IEBC staff were ‘negligent’ in doing their job and that they messed up the data because some voters had finger-prints and photos which did not match their names and other data captured electronically and, finally, the accuracy of the register was compromised by the existence of multiple registers and loss of data due to staff negligence,” Cord stated in their memorandum. 

Barasa Nyukuri, whose petition for the removal of the IEBC was rejected by the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee, also argued that electoral commission was unable to prepare a register that was accurate and verifiable for the next elections.

“We are sitting on a time bomb,” he said when he met the committee. “When they come here, ask them and they will tell you they don’t have a register,” he said. 

With the commission also planning to buy additional biometric voter registration kits ahead of elections, he said, there cannot be a proper register in time for the poll.

TIME CONSUMING

The IEBC is expected to address this question when it meets the committee on Monday.  

Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria told the Saturday Nation that Jubilee’s contention is that with the law allowing continuous registration, it would be possible to clean the register when the time comes.  

“Getting 18 million Kenyans to register as voters would also take time,” he argued.  

The matter is also politically important for all the parties because having a fresh voters’ register would mean that they mobilise their supporters afresh, meaning they would have the double task of getting them to register and then getting them to vote.

The revelation that there are 9.2 million adults not registered as voters would also give parties ideas about how to go after them.  

Appearing before the MPs Friday, the secretary-general of TNA, Mr Onyango Oloo, said the IEBC commissioners should leave office voluntarily.

“Any other way for changing the commission apart from voluntary resignation will push us into a constitutional crisis, where we will either have a tribunal in place and no commissioners in office, or have a government extending its term until the issue is sorted out,” he said.

But Suna East MP Junet Mohammed asked what action had been taken on the four commissioners, who had requested their resignation and whether Jubilee was committed to having the commissioners resign voluntarily.

Co-chair James Orengo refuted claims that Cord was on a smear campaign of the commission.