Failing to plan is planning to fail. We were reminded of this adage often attributed to Benjamin Franklin at a media sector conference at the weekend.
A charged participant was addressing Director of Public Prosecutions Noordin Haji, Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission CEO Twalib Mbarak and Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission chairman Wafula Chebukati, who were panellists, alongside Yours Truly, at a discussion on election preparedness.
We were told that elaborate plans were in place for a smooth general election on August 9, 2022. Lessons from the disputed 2007, 2013 and 2017 have informed a series of legal and administrative proposals to improve election management.
The IEBC, in February 2019, launched the “Post-election Evaluation Report” from the 2017 polls, which included acknowledgment of the lapses cited in the historic Supreme Court nullification of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s initial victory. Last month, it launched its 2022-2024 Strategic Plan, which is buttressed by the Election Operation Plan, Boundaries Review Operation Plan and Policy Manuals providing roadmaps to the 2022 elections.
The three institutions have also collaborated on a review of the current legal regime governing elections. The result has been several proposals to the election laws, including the Referendum Bill and the Elections Campaign Financing Bill.
It has also submitted to the National Assembly and the Senate a document entitled “Electoral Law Reform in Kenya: The IEBC Experience”, a detailed look at the basic thresholds towards delivery of free, fair, peaceful, accountable and verifiable elections. It proposes further review of electoral laws to tackle jurisdictional overlaps, grey areas, loopholes and contradictions.
It is essential, for instance, to close the windows which allow all manner of miscreants who wouldn’t pass the basic ethics and integrity test demanded by the Constitution to still present their candidacies.
There is also a need to define the roles and loyalties of security officers assigned to elections, going by several unsavoury incidents at recent ward and parliamentary by-elections. Police looked on helplessly as politicians incited and directed violence, sometimes seeming to act as agents of candidates favoured by the government rather than neutral enforcers of the law.
If the violence in the by-elections is anything to go by, we could be headed for a turbulent period come next year, given what is at stake. We should be contemplating the worst-case scenario of a reprise of the 2017 post-election violence if the responsible institutions do not act now.
Parliament is allowing critical amendments to the election law to gather dust and they will surely be time-barred. The Executive has lost all interest in electoral law reform and is instead diverted by pursuit of the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) constitutional amendment referendum.
The National Police Service, the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, the National Integration and Cohesion Commission and the National Intelligence Service have been reduced to ineffective partisan observers. They are refusing or are unable to take appropriate action on purveyors of hate speech, violence, ethnic conflict, intimidation, bribery and the other criminal offences openly witnessed at election campaigns.
The IEBC itself has refused to exercise its powers to effectively sanction those seen committing those election offences. It has the power to actually remove them from the ballot but has opted to let impunity reign. Instead of firm, decisive and coordinated action, we are seeing lamentations, buck-passing and blame games.
In that situation we must start preparing for the worst. A reprise of 2007 is likely in the current atmosphere of a deeply polarised state, an election planned to fail, a government that seems to be preparing to neuter independent institutions so that it can hijack and control the election machinery, and promotion of hate narratives that can so easily spiral out of control.
Well, 2007 may be just a fuzzy memory for those coming of age but very clear and present for those who lived through the terror and mayhem. Rivers of blood flowed as marauding gangs marched through towns and the countryside hacking to death those targeted just because they spoke a different language. Kenya was tottering dangerous close to the brutal chaos of civil war, ethnic cleansing and complete collapse — until the timely intervention that pulled us from the brink.
We will be heading down that slippery slope again. And 2022 could be much worse because, beyond the traditional divides of tribe and party loyalties, we now have another monster in promotion of class war narratives.
