Do you trust IEBC will clean up the voter register properly?

Bob Odhiambo

We are once again faced with political anxiety stemming from the forthcoming General Election.

The focus once against shifts to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission.

The commission has two choices; to bungle the election and throw Kenya into turmoil or to make Kenya proud by presiding over a credible election that reflects the will of the Kenyan people.

According to the KPMG audit on the voter register, some 2.3 million Kenyans aged 18 and above have died since 2012 but only 970,895 deaths had been registered. It means 1.3 million dead voters are still in the register set to be used in the August 8 elections.

The audit goes further to report 502,409 irregularities. Some of the errors noted were based on gender, age or date of birth. KPMG also wants 92,277 voters with matching names and ID numbers knocked out of the register.

It is clear IEBC cannot be trusted to clean the register. It is the commission that presided over all these irregularities unearthed by the audit. There were claims it issued voter registration kits for use by the NYS in areas not even designated. We can’t trust them to preside over the clear up.

The writer is an administrator at Moi University, Eldoret

Mark Oloo

The credibility of an election depends on many other things away from the electoral commission itself.

However, with systems in place and without interference from the government, nothing much prevents an election from being free and fair. We can only hope that after the audit, IEBC will do whatever it takes to protect the sanctity of the electoral process. I believe that the commission and its chairman Wafula Chebukati means well for the nation.

I have no doubt that it will not engage in any form of monkey business because there would be no justification for it. When hell broke lose after the controversial 2007 General Election, the polls agency then was roundly blamed.

The country and the world was shocked when the commission chairman declared he did not know whether the declared presidential winner had won fairly. What followed were sporadic attacks that Kenyans still recall. More than 1,000 people were killed and thousands displaced.

This is why I want to urge the commission to take its work seriously and avoid the temptation of taking sides with any contender in the August 8 General Election. It must be remembered that Kenya is greater than any one individual. As a country, we all have a responsibility to ensure we strengthen our democracy.

The writer is a journalism scholar