Last week, I took a young girl who had just completed her Form 4 exams and whose ID was brand new, just picked just a week earlier, to register for a Safaricom line.
To our utter shock, we discovered that her name and identity card number already had several Sim cards registered to them. All of them were registered long before we even collected the ID from the registration centre.
Safaricom staff appeared helpless, only offering the lame explanation that this had become a threat to their own business, and a rising crisis that they could only escalate to their fraud department whenever a complainant appeared.
However, since they needed her picture and the physical identity card to be registered, I enquired from them how the people who had illegally registered lines in the girl’s ID had succeeded. They mumbled something again about their fraud department and I let the matter rest.
This incident reminded me of a newspaper article I had read in one of the dailies just a week earlier. In it, security officials were bemoaning the rise of cybercrimes as official systems got overwhelmed with complaints.
Many of the crimes are related, especially the hack jobs and identity thefts that keep financial and security systems watchers awake at night. But as a political commentator, my first instinct was to wonder if anyone was doing enough to stop this crisis seeping into the electoral systems, given the magnitude of the 2022 polls.
CHEBUKATI INSPIRES ZERO CONFIDENCE
And it is not just the technology part of the election process that worries me, but the more analogue parts too, like the opening of ballots and counting. We are a country of plain aesthetics, where authorities can appear to be very busy, yet they are doing absolutely nothing.
I have often argued that the biggest problem in this country is the management of elections. The five-year cycle is such that those who lose each election convince themselves that they have been robbed, and spend the next five years strategising on how to win the next contest.
However, while deals are struck on both sides of the political divide, none, since 1997’s Inter-Parties Parliamentary Group (IPPG) deal, appears tailored to improve the management of elections. And yet, as the 2022 poll approaches, there are more angry potential contestants, and hungry voters, to add to a disturbing mix.
The only way to gauge the preparedness of the IEBC to conduct the 2022 election is through the recent by-elections. I have to say from the onset that IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati hardly inspires any confidence in me, and I wouldn’t trust him to conduct elections for my village rice farmers’ small association.
The recent by-elections bear witness to a toothless organiSation run by an even more toothless chair, whose shining moments must be the times he quotes Abraham Lincoln.
In Matungu, for example, election officials were assaulted in broad daylight, recorded on video, yet the outrage from the commission didn’t record on the anger scale at all.
At the time of writing this article, just as in Matungu, different sides of the contest in Bonchari were already pointing to a disturbing return of state interference, or the use of instruments of state power, in the campaigns.
I have already alluded to the existence of contenders for top seats, who appear angry, determined and loud, and who also have very many followers in the land. Add this to a disillusioned population, coming from a devastating pandemic and an economy that hasn’t danced to the aspirations of the common man, and you get the worrying signals of a divisive election ahead of us.
Do the electoral systems inspire belief among contenders and voters to an extent we can receive the results and go home knowing we have done the best we could? I hardly think so.
REGGAE PAUSED
In the wake of last week’s High Court judgment on the BBI Bill, it was interesting to see how roles can change. The people who cheered the Supreme Court nullification of the 2017 presidential election, mostly from the ODM side, condemned the ruling as 'political activism' within the Judiciary.
On the other hand, half of the formation that vowed to punish Chief Justice David Maraga and his colleagues by 'revisiting' them in 2017, mostly from the Tangatanga wing, cheered the High Court this time round.
Even if the Judiciary were to remain a soft landing spot for electoral disputes, we now know for sure that only favourable rulings register as fair in our political networks.
I am not sure there is any more life left for BBI in the short period between now and the 2022 elections, if the proponents are to launch an appeal, given how slow court processes can be in this country. However, I hold the view that since BBI is not strong on electoral reforms, there is nothing urgent in it that should be hurried as they are doing.
Instead, all top politicians, even those who stopped picking each other’s phone calls, must hold a roundtable and launch an IPPG II, to smooth the way for an election that will enjoy the acceptance of all, or a large percentage of the stakeholders.
It is inconceivable that a country divided by elections simply never does enough to make the next polls better. In my estimation, if you factor in the bitterness within the ruling party alone, I submit there are more divisive elements around the coming elections than there were ahead of the 2007 polls.
I believe the security agencies and the people who wield power in this country will have noticed this, and will most likely be rushing to find solutions before it is too late. But I can offer the free advice that the best way to hold the country together and avert national security threats in 2022 is to hold a credible election where the losers and winners both feel justice has been done.
As of today, we are not doing enough in this area, and we probably are running out of time. In fact, it doesn’t even appear this bothers our leaders, but the citizens must demand a free and fair election, preceded by credible electoral systems.
If we don’t do that, we can not only prepare for another divisive election, but also a whole five more years of noise, discontent and division This discord will be sown by poor handling of elections and perpetuated by the perceived losers waiting for revenge next time round, while discrediting the previous contest.
Whether our economy and national fabric can stand another five years of that is a story for another day.
(Edited by V. Graham)
