Despite the Kenyan opposition oozing with confidence that they
have 10 million voters on their side in the August 8 election, they are
still worried over a number of issues.
One concern is
that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission has failed to
fulfil certain duties within the timelines provided for in the law.
John
Onyando, a Nasa communications official, says that the IEBC is yet to
publish the audited register of voters despite the law requiring that
the register be published 30 days before the election.
The Commission says it will do so on August 1.
Gladwel
Otieno, the executive director of the Centre for Open Governance went
to court on July 18 to compel the IEBC to publish the registers per
polling station to allow public scrutiny.
The second
concern for Nasa, according to Mr Onyando are the 1.5 million dead
voters still in the register, the 400,000 cases of double registration
and those who share national identification numbers.
The
IEBC chairman, Wafula Chebukati, has clarified that the Kenya
Integrated Elections Management System will provide foolproof
authentication on election day and that there is no way anyone could use
names of anyone that will not be physically present to vote.
Under
the Election Laws (Amendment) Act, 2016, there will be only 700 voters
per stream out of the total 40,883 polling stations in the country. Some
of the polling stations will have more streams than others depending on
the population.
The third concern is the prospect of equipment failing, forcing the IEBC to resort to a manual system.
Mr
Onyando says Nasa is concerned that the biometric voter identification
kits will not have been tested until three days to the election.
“We
would have preferred that the kits be tested in their real environment
so that challenges such as performance and power retention are
identified on time,” said Mr Onyando.
In 2013, some
voter identification kits failed either because they had not been
charged or the handlers had not been sufficiently trained. This time,
the IEBC has acquired special tablets to verify the particulars of each
voter, with each tablet locked to a particular polling station.
Nasa
is also concerned about some the activities of the Jubilee government
in the run-up to the elections. The Nasa presidential candidate, Raila
Odinga, has complained that the government has released some police and
military officers to be deployed as poll officials in as-yet-unspecified
areas.
Both Jubilee and the government deny this.
There
is concern that that the government is forcing civil servants, Cabinet
Secretaries and parastatal heads to campaign for Jubilee contrary to the
law.
Nasa alleges that the government has classified
most of the opposition strongholds as hotspots that will require heavy
presence of security agents in an effort to intimidate their supporters
not to come and vote.
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