Tag Archives: diaspora voting

One year out, do any Kenyans doubt that William Ruto would use violence to avoid being the first Kenyan president to be found by the Electoral Commission to have lost re-election at the polls?

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I am too far removed from “the ground” in Kenya to be able to directly answer this question myself, but it is one that has to be asked by the UK and German governments leading this year’s democracy assistance “basket fund”, by all Kenyans of course, by foreigners and ex-pats working in democracy assistance or civil society efforts, etc.

To me, the factual underpinnings for any such belief (regarding election violence) seem conspicuously lacking from everything I know about Kenya, Kenyan politics, William Ruto specifically and his history since 1992’s re-election of Daniel arap-Moi when Ruto was a key KANU “Youth Winger”. That first multi -party and post-Cold War election was observed by the International Republican Institute (“IRI”) with funding from USAID after Moi rejected the request of George H.W. Bush’s Ambassador Hempstone to permit an International Election Observation Mission by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (“NDI”) and US democracy assistance involvement became a permanent feature.

Most recently the normal baseline of extrajudicial killings that appear to connect to issues of political power seems to be increasing. Again, I am at a great distance and not a source of facts or judgment about what Kenya’s main political players are doing just now, just a repository of the inconvenient context of recent decades in the lives of these men, their competition and their country (and mine).

Certainly for IRI, NDI and their funders at the National Endowment for Democracy the unique new context includes “January 6” which they denounced rightly and as was required of them at the time, with a new Trump II administration which “woodchippered” USAID, tried to eliminate NED, and has adopted the previously unprecedented practice of direct POTUS endorsement of some foreign presidential candidates on a seemingly ad hoc basis as to process, motive and timing.

Likewise the role of non-democratic actors in Kenya’s Presidential campaign will presumably be that much greater than in the past; those actors are unlikely to incentivize or pressure Ruto to adopt more thoroughly democratic norms.

Kenya 2007 election- Ambassador Ranneberger and Connie Newman at polling station Nairobi

New U.S.-Kenya links as election approaches

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The Association of Kenyan Diaspora Organizations will be holding its annual conference in Seattle this weekend (August 27-28), including an appearance by IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati who will discuss the status of diaspora voting for the 2022 General Election. See my last post which discusses the diaspora voting issue: “Kenya’s IEBC ‘races’ to fulfill mandate from 2010 Constitution for lawful 2022 general election; behind again after 2013 and 2017 failures“.

“Republican Senators urge Biden to prioritize Kenya-U.S. trade deal” Business Daily, August 25, 2021

“BBI Ruling Leaves Kenya at a Crossroads” blog post by Michelle Gavin at Council on Foreign Relations “Africa in Transition“. [Ed. note: Michelle Gavin was also handling the Africa program at CFR during the fraudulent 2007 election and ensuing crisis.  Non-resident fellow Jendayi Frazer, of course, was Asst. Secretary of State during the election and crisis.  Between the two there is unusually intimate institutional memory for the Council on Foreign Relations, along with the related competing interests associated with the connections.]

In the World Politics Review weekly Africa Watch newsletter, Chris Olaoluwa Ogunmodede argues that “A Court Ruling Just Upended Kenya’s Political Landscape“.

Growers Alliance Coffee from Kenya Diaspora Trade: Growers Alliance Coffee from Kenya

Here is the link to read about and order from Growers Alliance Coffee from my old friends Martin and Purity in St. Augustine, Florida.

Kenya’s IEBC “races” to fulfill mandates from 2010 Constitution for lawful 2022 general election; behind again after 2013 and 2017 failures

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Kenya 2007 Election campaign posters “Kalonzo Musyoka for President” on duka Eastern Kenya

 

For the latest from Kenya’s IEBC, see “Electoral body in rush to seal 2022 loopholes” from The People’s Daily.

Same issues as 2013 and 2017, same alleged frantic time-crunch.

For instance, the 2010 “New Katiba” granted the right to vote to Kenyans in the diaspora, starting with the 2012 general election. Even though the election was postponed to 2013, the IEBC under then-Chairman Issack Hassan elected to disenfranchise diaspora voters in spite of the coming into force of the new Constitution.

See, “IFES to webccast workshop on Kenya Diaspora voting “, Nov 1, 2012, Africommons.

But see, “Kenya, Attempt to suppress the diaspora vote“, Dec 12, 2012, by Nathan Wangusi, Pambazuka.

After the failures of 2013, in particular the procurement-fraud driven failure of electronic poll books and the breakdown of the results transmission system with no organized manual backup, and full election results not published (see “It’s mid-June: another month goes by without Kenya’s election results while Hassan goes to Washington) Hassan was eventually forced out by protests in 2016.  See my Page covering the 2012-13 election in detail.

After departing the IEBC Hassan has been on the international election assistance circuit, having already traveled to observe (positively) Djiboutian President Guelleh’s 2016 re-election on behalf of IGAD while still IEBC Chairman. Most recently he was associated with a USAID-funded joint International Republican Institute/National Democratic Institute election assessment in Ethiopia this year. (See report released today.)

The current IEBC Chairman, Wafula Chebukati, was then appointed by President Uhuru Kenyatta from the nominees of a controversial selection process and took office in January 2017 in time for the general election and annulled presidential vote that August, marked by the unsolved abduction, torture and murder of the ICT Director and the subsequent resignation of a majority of the Commissioners.

Although civil society groups had obtained a 2015 court ruling to enforce the diaspora voting requirement of the Constitution, the IEBC still failed in 2017 to implement more than a very limited, truncated, diaspora vote process.

See “Diaspora Voting in Kenya: a Promise Denied“, Elizabeth Iams Wellman and Beth Elise Whitaker, African Affairs, Vol. 120, Issue 479, April 2021, Pages 199-217. (In 2010, Kenya extended voting rights to its estimated 3,000,000 citizens living abroad . . . Yet . . . fewer than 3,000 Kenyans were permitted to vote from abroad in the 2013 and 2017 presidential elections. What explains the failure of the Kenyan government to implement diaspora voting on a broader scale? . . . We argue that uncertainty about the number of Kenyan emigrants and their political preferences, paired with a highly competitive electoral climate, meant there was little political will to push for more widespread implementation of diaspora voting.)

A year ago I warned: “Kenya Election Preparation: raising alarm for 2022, past secrets still buried“.