Tag Archives: voter register

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

[Updated Wednesday] Kenyan election: What kind of “audit” did the IEBC do without the actual voter registration lists used? Will the Supreme Court require the registers to be disclosed as sought by AfriCOG?

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Watch the hearings live: Citizen TV; or the other Kenyan networks.

At 9am tomorrow [Wednesday] in Nairobi, the Kenyan Supreme Court is scheduled to announce a key ruling. The issue is whether or not the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) will be required to produce for scrutiny the actual voter registration lists used in the voting.

[Update: On Wednesday morning, the Supreme Court denied the production request from AfriCOG as time-barred, saying it needed to have been filed with the original petition. Once again, the Court seems to be treating this as ordinary civil litigation subject to procedures but without the months or years that would ordinarily be involved in developing the facts of the case. The hearing has begun and the case will be decided without much evidence, which at some level was always inevitable given the time frame and the position of the IEBC as party litigant rather than a neutral body that would willingly cooperate with scrutiny.]

The issue is before the Court due to the vigorous opposition, played out over two days in preliminary hearings, by the IEBC and the proponents of its March 9 “final results” to a request for these public records from AfriCOG.  On Monday afternoon, the Court heard the complaints of the IEBC side that AfriCOG had not formally served copies on enough of the various lawyers for the government and the other respondents for parties who are not directly implicated in the custody of the records.  Thus, more copies served, arguments were held this morning, with decision tomorrow.

Here is CapitalFM on the procedural arguments against production: “AFRICOG plea for voter register opposed.”