Using the Internet and social media, the fan base of the political competitors is a carpet of election observers.
Judging by the state of play on the political arena, there...
seems little chance that Kenya’s repeat presidential election scheduled for next week could be cancelled or suspended to a later date.
seems little chance that Kenya’s repeat presidential election scheduled for next week could be cancelled or suspended to a later date.
The
Supreme Court ordered for the fresh election after it nullified the
outcome of the August 8 poll, which put the incumbent President Uhuru
Kenyatta ahead of opposition strongman, former Prime Minister Raila
Odinga.
In this part of the world, right from the time
we introduced multiparty politics in the 1990s, the undercurrent for
free, fair and credible election has been enmeshed with endorsements of
elections, or lack of it, by international election observation
missions.
But following their recent performance in
the nullified poll, questions have arisen as to whether this works
anymore or are we seeing the last strand of external participation in
the assessment of electoral integrity in Kenya.
Put
differently, neutral players form a significant sponge in diplomatic
negotiations and way back in the Congress of Vienna of 1815, observers
formed an imperative node in concluding heated contestations as trusted
third parties with no direct stakes in the restoration of balance of
power in Europe after Napoleonic wars.
Today, an
election without international monitors or observers is likely to be
impugned; seen as manipulated or rigged. The logic, it seems, is that
governments and election authorities will behave well or gag outgrowths
of itchy manners in an election simply because they are being watched.
This has made Election Observers Reports quite cardinal in the fight for
free and fair elections around the world.
Since 2002,
international development partners in Kenya have been committing more
than a $1 million dollars at every election in support to local
institutions for free, credible and peaceful election.
The purse has of course always included resources towards voter
monitoring and observation. But does this help in any meaningful way?
What do election monitors and observers really do? Are they any relevant
for future elections to be free and credible?
Kenya’s
constitutional authority on election monitoring and observation can be
described as ordinary and conventional. Under the Constitution, the
Independent Electoral and Boundary Commission (IEBC) is given the
responsibility to facilitate the observation, monitoring and evaluation
of elections.
The role is fulfilled by both IEBC
internal mechanisms as well as the local and international teams, but
the election authorities can choose to ignore, as they often do, ensuing
opinions and recommendations.
Observers are
politically on a short leash since they are visitors in the palace of a
foreign King. Often, they are merely contractors or guests of the
election body.
As such, they are wont to be careful
for the best interests of their home countries in the geo-political
sense and in terms of their humanly characters. Hardly then would
observers want to make any costly mistakes or stir the hornet’s nest.
A
majority of the Kenyan citizens have owned the democracy project. This
is one of the immediate results of having high rate of literacy among
the electorate.
As more of the voters become educated
and exercise individual electoral decisions, poll observation is bound
to be questioned. This is a bit of an oxymoron but it will simply follow
as a result of the mere fact that citizens can play the same role by
their own volition, strengths and standards.
By
far the tilting point is on information technology and social media.
Crowd sourcing may have turned election on its head! Using the social
media, more actors have enlisted similar corpus of electoral monitoring
and observation, albeit without expertise.
Using the
Internet and the social media, the fan base of the political competitors
is a carpet of election monitors and observers with more or less real
time conversations. It matters not how others report on the elections.
The
professional election monitors and observers are, however, guided by a
compendium of internationally agreed standards and principles. For
instance, they should exhibit impartiality, integrity, independence and
professionalism.
The
observation process must strengthen the protection of human rights as
election itself is a celebration of human rights under the Bill of
rights.
Where foreign observers in particular do not
affirm the text book values and principles of electoral observation,
citizens become skeptical of their added value.
In
reality the new globalisation influence is constantly pushing for a joy
ride against such values to the detriment of democracy so long as the
countries undergoing elections seem not to falter away from the
perceived main path.
It appears that this is the
overriding spin for a new world in which these principles no longer mean
much to the dominant western political players.
No
wonder, the future of election observation and monitoring is in quandary
because of the little difference that it seems to make in the country’s
election process.
Otieno Aluoka is Advocate of the High Court of Kenya.
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