by
Patrick Smith in Nairobi
Questions
about Kenya's election results four days after voting and the crash
of electronic systems meant to provide safeguards against rigging are
raising the political temperature. Opinion is divided between those
who want the results out as soon as possible to defuse tensions, and
those who argue the release of disputed results could cause its own
problems. Civic activists are seeking a court injunction on 8 March
to stop the vote which they say has been compromised by the
malfunction of the electronic vote reporting systems
The
constitutional requirement is that the Independent Electoral and
Boundaries Commission announce the final results of the presidential
election within seven days of voting on 4 March.
On
the afternoon of 7 March, Issack Hassan, the beleaguered
chairman of the IEBC, said he would easily meet this and announce the
final results on 8 March. Those who framed the rule that results be
announced within seven days of voting have logic on their side.
Lengthy delays and and micro-debates about the legitimacy of results
keep the voting public waiting and can worsen tensions.
Equally,
natural justice dictates that IEBC officials thoroughly scrutinise
and verify all election results prior to announcement. That means
reconciling all data from the country's
33,000 polling stations with the results announced by the
returning officers from Kenya's 290
parliamentary constituencies.
This
reconciliation is significant because it is the main check that
political activists on the ground have to verify what they say and
agreed to in the polling stations against the results being announced
by IEBC central at the Bomas Centre, just outside Nairobi.
Making
the right call between the demands of the constitution and those of
an election seen to be credible by the maximum number of people is a
matter of the utmost seriousness. At stake is the credibility of the
4 March elections. And the outcome of the vote could affect the
security and future of one of Africa's most culturally and
economically dynamic countries.
Such
effects would ripple far beyond its borders. If Kenya goes wrong now,
it would be a terrible negation of the spirit of “can-do”
optimism currently coursing through the Africa's veins.
It
is not an easy balance to strike. To fulfil its constitutional
mandate, the IEBC must produce definitive and final results as soon
as possible: that is the first powerful argument. Should it fail to
do so, it would breach the law.
A
second argument is that any further delays in announcing the results
will inflame tensions and play into the hands of those who – for
whatever reasons – want to see to a rerun of the 2007-2008 election
crisis.
The
other course would be to proceed more slowly and deliberately with
the checking of the multiple sources of voting data, before
announcing definitive final election results. In practical terms this
would mean ensuring that the agreed results sheets – which should
have been signed by all the competing parties at each of the 33,000
polling stations -- can be reconciled with the accumulated results
announced for all 290 constituencies by the local returning officers.
This
meticulous procedure was followed for several constituencies in the
vote counting on 6 March at Bomas Centre. But to follow it for all
291 constituencies would risk delaying the announcement of final
presidential results beyond the constitutional deadline of 11 March.
It seems that the IEBC officials judged that process to be too rowdy,
acrimonious and time-consuming and ordered all the party agents to
leave the secure counting centre in the evening of 6 March.
However,
if a way to run this verification exercise in full view of the rival
parties could be found,
it
would meet many of the concerns over transparency voiced by Raila
Odinga's Coalition for Reforms and Democracy and sundry other
political groupings. The post-election manoeuvres have now reached a
critical point.
By
the end of 7 March, Odinga's organisation seemed to be moving towards
a rejectionist position. To questions about whether the coalition
would recognise election results that did not allow a full
verification process, Odinga's Vice Presidential candidate Stephen
Kalonzo Musyoka replied “probably not” as he strode out of his
press conference earlier in the day.
A
rush to judgement is in no one's interests. In the aftermath of the
widespread technical and administrative failures in the 4 March
elections, restoring their credibility is surely the main goal. That
credibility is in question after the IEBC abandoned the biometric
systems to verify the identities of registered voters on election day
and subsequently ditched the problematic electronic transmission of
results in favour of the old-fashioned manual systems of signed
results and tallying sheets, constituency by constituency.
Certainly,
it was always the case that the manual systems of results sheets
would provide the formal and final election results. But the
electronic transmission of the voting data from each of the polling
stations and biometric voter registration were meant to provide a
useful checks against tampering with the results. The absence of
these safeguards require that the rival candidates show a herculean
capacity to trust the system. To judge from the main candidates'
public utterances this week, their
trust
in the IEBC is fast evaporating.
So
the best course of action would be for senior representatives from
each of the competing parties to agree a way to test thoroughly all
the results to be announced with the senior managers of the IEBC.
That agreement should then be communicated to all of their respective
followers with a warning that they can expect further and legitimate
delays in the release of the results.
If
the political leaders and the IEBC directors can agree – even at
this late stage – on a solution that addresses most of the
constructive criticism, trouble can still be averted. Without such
attempts to reach consensus on the management of the results, given
the administrative and technical malfunctions of the IEBC's reporting
systems, the justifiably lauded patience of Kenyans could be
stretched to the outer limits
