NAIROBI (Xinhua) – Kenya will have one of the world’s longest lists of public representatives at the 2012 general election that could be its biggest challenge yet. According to political analyst Martins Oloo, this will be a challenge not only for Kenya, but for the entire African continent. “Even the United States has not been able to elect so many representatives in a single day. They too have many representatives but they are elected on different days,” he said.
Voters will vote for eight candidates in a day who will include the president, the running mate, the member of parliament, the governor, the deputy governor, the senator, as well as woman and county representatives. The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission chairman, Issack Hassan, warned that the elections are challenging not only for the electoral management body, but for the voters and the political actors. “The Commission’s timeframe is optimistic, if not ambitious. It has tried to compress and fast-track processes. It has assumed the best case scenarios where objections and court cases will not further delay the process,” he said.
Top on the commission’s priority list is the delimitation of boundaries and voter registration. The IEBC Act dictates the manner and timeframe within which the commission should deal with issues arising out of the first review of constituency boundaries. Now the new body is expected then to undertake recruitment of constituency election coordinators for a period of 27 days between Oct. 27, 2011 and November 22, 2011. According to the work plan, the new body is to take a recess of 30 days for the December and New Year holidays for 30 days from Dec. 10, 2011 to Jan. 8, 2012.
The critical exercise of registration of voters both manual and electronic has been slated to take 170 days beginning Feb. 22, 2012 to Aug. 9, 2012. The manual registration is supposed to take 60 days, while the electronic has been allocated 113 days. The registration of voters in the diaspora is expected to take the longest period of 477 days, beginning September 2011 to Dec. 24, 2012. Procurement of balloting materials has been slated to take three months, from Feb. 20, 2012 to May 19, the same year.
Voter education is another component that the Isaack team believes would take some time, and they have allocated 351 days from Jan. 9, 2012 to Dec. 24, 2012. Appointment of observers and evaluators is expected to take 292 days from November this year to August next year. According to the work plan, the Political Parties Act should be amended to conform to the new Constitution.
That could take 107 days from May to August this year. On the other hand, the Isaack team points out that the country cannot go to the polls without an Election Bill, which they have given 81 days to be put in place from scratch to finish. This will be from May to August this year.
REPORTED BY ODE OMONDI (XINHUA)
