Ruling brings into focus role of election observers

The annulment of the presidential poll results has brought into focus the usefulness of foreign observers.

The nine observer missions, including the European Union and the African Union, lauded the August 8 elections as being generally free and fair.

However, the Justice David Maraga-led Supreme Court on Friday said the presidential poll was riddled with so many irregularities that it was impossible to determine who won.

President Uhuru Kenyatta’s lawyer Fred Ngatia cited the observer missions’ endorsement of the result as part of his defence.

Now the observers stand accused of being used to rubber stamp fraudulent elections in friendly regimes across the developing world.  

PRAISED IEBC

In a pre-poll report, the US election monitoring group praised the performance of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission while also pointing to commissioners’ “inadequate communication with stakeholders and insufficient transparency regarding their decision-making”.

In his remarks on behalf of the Carter Centre after the General Election, the immediate former US Secretary of State John Kerry added that there had been some “little aberrations here and there but none that we thus far feel affected the overall integrity of the process”.

Shortly before flying out, Mr Kerry praised the electoral commission for having done an “extraordinary job to ensure that Kenya has free, fair and credible polls”.

He then called on the opposition to “get over it and move on”.

DISAPPOINTED

Nasa presidential flagbearer Raila Odinga said he was disappointed with international observers.

In an interview with CNN two days after the election, Mr Odinga said the observers concentrated on voting and tallying but not transmission of results.

“I think they have not helped Kenyans resolve this dispute. They have confounded it by giving basically an approval to a fairly flawed process…and therefore I am very disappointed with John Kerry and the other observers,” he said.

READ: Carter Center clarifies polls monitoring assessment

Writing in the New York Post, Hellen Epstein, an American author and journalist who covered the August 8 elections, castigated the Carter Centre’s endorsement of the exercise.  

MEDDLING 
“Another rigged election in Africa is not news,” she wrote.

“But that US election observers were quick to endorse it is shocking. Perhaps they believed that wrapping the election up quickly would prevent violence,” she added, alluding to the mayhem that broke out following the disputed presidential election of 2007.

She said the way the observers, particularly the Americans, handled the elections suggested that there was a concerted effort by foreign governments to meddle in Kenyan affairs.

POLITICS

“The US Government has a disturbing history of meddling in the politics of developing countries…In countries like Kenya, where important US interests are at stake, the onslaught of mass media distortions and biased international election observers and Western-backed NGOs, suggest the possibility of concerted strategy,” Ms Epstein wrote.

And on Friday, the EU Observer Mission praised the Supreme Court ruling “since it demonstrates the independence of Kenya’s Judiciary and the effective electoral complaint mechanism in place”.

The statement said while the EU was impartial, it called on the “election administration to consult with stakeholders, to work transparently and to give regular updates on progress being made”.