Senators to support amendments to election laws
Senate Speaker Amason Kingi during Senate plenary at the Senate Chambers, Parliament buildings, Nairobi. [Elvis Ogina, Standard]
Senators have vowed to support amendments to the election laws in the country which are aimed at making the process transparent and fair while making the declaration of a win in a presidential election much easier than it has been in the past elections.
The Senators who were making a contribution to the Elections (Amendment) (No.2) Bill (Senate Bills No.29 of 2024) which is now on the second reading stage before the house said they will like a scenario like in United States of America where the electoral process was very efficient.
The National Dialogue Committee(NADCO) made several recommendations after meeting various stakeholders and experts which included the amendment of the First Schedule to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission Act, 2011 to establish a Selection Panel for IEBC Commissioners.
?The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission Act, 2011 should be amended to provide that respective nominating bodies shall select the nominees for appointment through a competitive and transparent process and ensure that no more than two-thirds of the nominees are of the same gender,? said the NADCO report.
The NADCO report sought to have section 6 of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission Act, 2011 amended to include experience in information and communication technology and accounting as professional qualifications for appointment as a member of the IEBC.
The report seeks to have the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission after every general election review its operations and make the necessary changes required to make its operations more efficient, effective, transparent and accountable.
The IEBC shall within three months of its reconstitution develop internal guidelines delineating the administrative and policy responsibilities of the Chairperson and Commissioners and institutional guidelines on administrative and policy functions.
?Article 138 of the Constitution be amended to clarify on the role of the other commissioners before the Chairperson declares the final Presidential results. Amend the Elections Act, 2011 to provide for processing and declaration of results,? says the report.
Senate Majority Leader Aaron Cheruiyot who moved the motion said that this time these laws are being made more than three years before a general election this means that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) officials will have sufficient time to acquaint themselves with all the provisions of our laws as they prepare to take the country to an election.
?This is one of the National Dialogue Committee (NADCO) Bills that came out of a negotiated dialogue process at the Bomas of Kenya, we had representation from Azimio la Umoja One-Kenya Coalition and Kenya Kwanza Coalition, there are many issues that Kenyans raised about our electoral processes when they came and made presentations before us,? said Cheruiyot.
The Kericho Senator said that the bill has 39 Clauses addressing many of the issues that have been of concern to Kenyans and that this legislation is a master stroke since unlike in all other elections from 2017 and 2022 they have struggled in parliament to amend election laws a few months to election time which did not give sufficient time to IEBC to prepare adequately.
Cheruiyot said that the IEBC officials will have ample time to learn the expectations of Kenyans unlike it has been previously where Parliament has amended election laws two or three months before an election and after election they have gone ahead to fight and ask the IEBC why they did not do certain things, ignoring the obvious and basic fact that they did not have sufficient time to prepare.
The Kericho Senator said we have just watched elections in a first world country where Elections were held where more than 130 million people voted and after about five hours after the conclusion of the exercise you could get an indication of who took the lead due to their efficient electoral process.
?In fact, if you have an interesting candidate like the President-elect of the United States of America, he did not even wait for other states to declare their results, once it became apparent that he was going to garner the magical 270 electoral college votes, he went ahead and gave his victory speech, the losing candidate also held back for a while, eventually, in less than 24 hours after the election, she gave her concession speech and life moved on,? said Cheruiyot.
Nyamira Senator Okongo Omogeni who seconded the motion said that spirit in NADCO was to ensure that when we go to the next elections, the person who wins the confidence of Kenyans and garners the majority of votes does not face a contestation in the Supreme Court.
Omogeni said that one of the issues that they really fought about during the NADCO meeting at Bomas is Clause 39 of the Bill giving the example in USA where you will start predicting the winner in a presidential election going by results coming from the states and that he looks forward when the country elections will be conducted like in the USA.
He said the Bill is proposing that we allow polling stations to have returning officers so that by the time they are done with counting and tallying of votes in that polling station, the Returning Officer will give final results and declare the winner from that polling station, so that by midnight, we should be getting results telling us who has won.
?That is the spirit behind these proposed amendments, so that we do not need to wait for the commissioners in Nairobi to tell us who has won in Ikolomani, if in Borabu we have tallied votes from all the polling stations by the close of the day, we should see a 411 telling us that Candidate A has taken Borabu. By the time we wake up in the morning, we should be knowing from all our constituencies, 290 of them, who is leading in a particular constituency,? said Omogeni.
The Nyamira Senator said that while they have not prescribed in these amendments that the IEBC should assist political parties in carrying out nominations time has come for political parties to allow IEBC to conduct their nominations since there are many regions where nominations mean everything where if you win, you are as good as an elected MP.
Nandi Senator Samson Cherarkey said that the cost of election in Kenya very expensive and that in the last election of 2022, Kenya spent a whopping Sh 35.8 billion which translates to Sh 2,000 shillings per voter, which is very expensive across the world and that we must agree that the election business in Kenya should not be a matter of life and death.
Cherarkey said that in the USA people voted by mail with those participating accepting results graciously and that the country should have a peaceful transition, where people go into an election contest and when you lose fairly you accept noting that there is a deficit of trust among African countries and, more so Kenyans where we do not trust each other.
?We are aware of what happened in 2008 after elections were tampered with, the problem in this country is lack of trust in the institutions we have, People do not even trust Parliament, the Judiciary and the Executive, it behooves us to trust institutions that the Constitution has established, that is why the cost of election is very high in this country,? said Cherarkey.
Vihiga Senator Godfrey Osotsi said he was glad that the Senate has already dispensed with the Political Parties Act, which is now supposed to go to a Committee of the Whole House and that they should now focus in ensuring that the Election Amendments Bill is passed and that he supported several provision in the bill even as he has reservations on others.
Osotsi said it is a pity that the country does not have an IEBC Commission terming it as very risky and that it was important that the courts also take judicial notice of what is happening in the country, because without an IEBC, we run a major constitutional risk and that he was surprised a mere decision of coming up with a selection committee that may serve for three months has dragged in court.
?Even after the court made a decision on that, some other people rushed to court, why are the courts entertaining all this they need to take judicial notice of what is happening to the country and of the fact that the un-availability of IEBC is a serious, problem and risk that can lead to a constitutional crisis,? said Osotsi.
The Vihiga Senator said It is important for us to have an IEBC, so that by-elections can be held and the people of Banissa and other several electoral areas who do not have representatives can have them. Some are even unable to get services, because they do not have either a Member of County Assembly or a Member of Parliament.
Kakamega Senator Boni Khalwale said that he strongly believes that election laws should be reviewed regularly as a practice at the end of every electoral cycle because there are lessons that we learn from every election, that invite an opportunity for us to make the process better and we should therefore, not get tired of reviewing our election laws over and over again.
Khalwale said that It is agreed that an election starts and must end at a polling station since this was not only the intention of the Constitution, but it was also confirmed by the decision of the High Court which has guided many petitions in this country, especially those of presidential elections and that they should defeat the corruption that accompanies the voting process that leads to delay.
?I will tell you what annoys me based on my own experience. We have counting and tallying centre, and I usually know the results because I get feedback from my counting agents in every polling station, after knowing the results by around midnight, I am forced to stay for three days for the Returning Officer to announce what I already know,? said Khalwale.
