Ajabu Africa News

PHOTO:

Cord leader Raila Odinga (centre), is received by residents of Eldoret when he arrived for a delegate's meeting at Poa Place hotel in Eldoret Uasin Gishu County yesterday. 05.12.2015. Photo By Peter Ochieng.

By:

Alphonce Shiundu

Posted:

Dec,05-2015 17:25:15

In a new report by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission of Kenya, CORD strongholds have taken the lion's share of the newly-registered voters.

At least 17 counties in Western, Nyanza, Coast and Ukambani regions--where an overwhelming majority of governors, senators and MPs were elected on a CORD ticket in the 2013 polls--have nearly two thirds of all the new voters registered in the last fiscal year.

IEBC figures show that Kakamega, Machakos, Kisumu, Kilifi, Bungoma, Kisii, Kitui, Homa Bay, Siaya and Busia are among the top ten counties where majority of the new voters rushed to get their names in the voters' register ahead of the 2017 polls.

In these counties, where the Opposition won an overwhelming majority of electoral seats in 2013, there are 64,000 new voters out of the national total of 106,601.

Kisumu and Siaya counties, which are CORD leader Raila Odinga's strongest support base, registered a combined total of 9,794 new voters. The three Ukambani counties of Kitui, Machakos and Makueni, where Raila's co-principal Kalonzo Musyoka enjoys a huge following, registered 14,461 new voters. In Bungoma County, the political bedrock of the other CORD co-principal, Moses Wetang'ula, there are 5,046 new registered voters.

The opposition leaders have mounted campaigns to have eligible Kenyans in their strongholds to register in large numbers in preparation for the next elections. These campaigns appear to be bearing fruit.

Uhuru's county

President Uhuru Kenyatta's home county, Kiambu (4,278) is the only one from Central Kenya to register more than 4,000 new voters. In Nyeri, the home county of the former President Mwai Kibaki, managed to register 1,092 new voters, while Uasin Gishu, the home county of the Deputy President William Ruto, registered only 1,392 new voters.

In IEBC's report filed with the National Assembly, the commission complains that lack of money made it difficult to go out and push for more people to register. The registration was a quiet affair done in the commission's offices at the constituency level.

IEBC chairman Issack Hassan said the commission is not just focused on the local registration, but that it was also working to make sure that Kenyans living abroad get a chance to pick their favourite leaders.

"We remain committed to the progressive realisation of every Kenyan's right to vote," Hassan noted in the report submitted to Parliament on Tuesday.

The bad news for the country is that while the IEBC targets eight million new voters in the next one and half years before the elections, only 106,601 people registered in the last one year. Commission CEO Ezra Chiloba told The Standard on Sunday that within the next six months, his team would spend Sh500 million allocated for voter registration in the current financial year to recruit four million new voters.

"We are on course..The target is eight million new voters by the next election," said Chiloba, his confidence buoyed by the fact that in the one week that the IEBC had a voter education week, the commission managed to register 22,946 voters.

Aggressive plan

In a fortnight, the commission plans to roll out a comprehensive plan of how the registration of new voters, scheduled to begin next year, will be done. The Sh500 million, he said, was not enough, but the commission remained optimistic that it was going to work.

"We have tried to develop scenarios on how to go about it... so we said we will begin early next year. If we do it now, because of the rains, it might be costly," he said.

But politicians from both sides of the Jubilee divide are not happy with the numbers. They blame the government and the IEBC for failing to do a comprehensive campaign to make sure more people register.

"The low numbers are because of two things: voter apathy in our strongholds, which is worrying, and the culture of last-minute registration. But I am running a campaign called 'umira' which means 'get out and vote' and I am targeting five million new voters before the next election," Kuria said. "We are going to register in numbers never seen before in this country."

Asked if he was worried that the opposition strongholds had taken up the lion's share, he retorted: "It is good for other people to think that they are ahead. But we have the numbers."

ODM chairman John Mbadi (Suba), the Director of Elections Junet Mohammed (Suna East) and the Political Affairs Secretary Opiyo Wandayi (Ugunja) told The Standard on Sunday that the numbers in their strongholds showed that people were keen to get their voice heard at the ballot.

"Prior to the last elections, the voters in CORD strongholds were deliberately disenfranchised because of the few registration kits and the slow manner in which these were being operated. Those in Jubilee strongholds over-registered, they have no more people to register. What you are seeing is a tip of the iceberg," said Wandayi. Mbadi and Junet agreed with Wandayi and added that the campaign for the people to get national identity cards was the first step towards making sure that when IEBC rolled out the exercise, a big number of eligible citizens would register as voters.

"Jubilee strongholds are almost hitting a plateau. They met the IEBC target in the last elections and some even surpassed, so they have fewer people coming on board. While in CORD areas very few registered. What we want is to have the BVR kits spread per polling station, not like the other time when we had one kit for three or even five polling stations," said Mbadi. But the biggest challenges for voter registration are issuance of ID cards and civic education on voter registration. According to Junet, IEBC should get enough money to carry out countrywide voter registration campaigns.

"To be honest, as we speak, IEBC said it had lots of pending bills. I am not even sure they have the capacity to register voters. Who is going to give them services if they have all these debts?" said Junet.

The National Council of Churches of Kenya warned four days ago that the next elections would have to be monitored closely and IEBC had to be ready to deliver. "Learning from the past, we can expect that these polls too will be highly contested at all levels. It is, therefore, of great importance that all preparations necessary are made to ensure that the elections are credible and the results accepted by all," said the General Secretary Canon Peter Karanja.

Source:

standard