Why lack of voter education will impact negatively on August elections

Waiting to vote. IEBC and rights groups differ on whether Kenyan voters have received sufficient civic education or not. [File, Standard]

There has not been adequate civic and voter education with only 20 days to the polls, civil society groups have said.

NGOs are concerned that efforts by both Kenya National Integrated Civic Education Programme and the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) will not have an impact on informing voters about certain specifics of the August 8 elections.

“Since President Uhuru Kenyatta declared in December 2016 that every Kenyan knows how to vote, there has been very little or no effort at all to carry out civic and voter education,” said Kennedy Masime Executive Director at Centre for Governance and Development (CGD) yesterday.

“What the Government forgets is that Kenyan voter’s may be educated but not civic educated.”

Propaganda and misleading information on how and whom to vote for has now taken root on social media further causing confusion among the electorate.

Civil Society organisations argue hostility to donors who are mainly actors in the process and inadequate funding from Treasury will culminate in poor choices of leaders by voters and poor turnout in some regions where people may not see the need to vote for lack of information.

But IEBC, which is mandated by law to carry out voter education, has disputed the allegations insisting that it has been carrying out its role in all the 290 constituencies.

Wise choices

The electoral agency, through its director voter education, yesterday said it had kicked off voter education programmes countrywide and that Kenyans were likely to make wise choices of leaders as a result.

“Under Article 88 (4), (g) of the Constitution, IEBC has a mandate to conduct voter education. But IEBC needs to do that with other agencies including civil society,” said Rasi Masudi,  IEBC director voter education.

He said IEBC had accredited more than 200 voter education providers following advertisement for the same late last year.

Some of the civil society groups enlisted to carry out voter education include URAIA, Matatu Welfare Association, Haki Africa among others.

He said the exercise had been funded to the tune of Sh 1.4 billion, but it was inadequate to cover the time allocated for campaigns (two months).

“In spite of this, IEBC has been able to carry out voter education in three phases starting with the massive voter registration last year to date,” Masudi explained.

“By June this year, we had recruited over 2900 voter educators, with at least two in each constituency.”

He said IEBC was moving fast to correct the misleading information on the ground and exonerated IEBC from blame.

However, civil society organizations insist that the controversy surrounding  donor funding agency IFES and remarks by politicians casting aspersions on the role and impact of civic education in the run to August 2017 polls is suspect.

When IEBC set out to conduct mass registration, its target was 18 million eligible voters.

However, in the first phase of the mass voter registration that the commission conducted in February/March 2016, only 1.4 million Kenyans turned up.

Civic education would have enlightened young people on the ins and outs of the Constitution, the democratic and electoral processes, and the Government.

“Civic education is a much broader aspect compared to voter education that IEBC has been mandated by law. Compared to 2013, very little civic education has been carried out by the NGOs due to some of the threats they have received from government,” Masime explained.

No money

There are concerns that most Kenyans are not educated on the qualities of who to elect as a leader in the six electable positions of President, Governor, MP, senator, MCA and Woman Rep.

While IEBC is the only body mandated by law to carry out voter education, in most cases, its efforts are hampered by lack of funds to reach each and every corner of Kenya’s 290 constituencies.

“Both IEBC and each county have a component of civic education and voter education as this is well anchored in our laws. The problem is that the institutions have never been enabled to carry out their mandates,” said Kamau Ngugi, executive director National Coalition of Human Rights Defenders in Kenya.

“This is due to lack of goodwill and lack of accountability of those assigned to carry out those duties. What we have noticed is total misunderstanding of civic/voter education, which has been confused with peace caravans,” Ngugi explained.

He lamented about the amount of resources the politicians have put in place to urge their constituents to register as voters, arguing that voter registration should never been in a politician’s domain.

“Instead what we have is political indoctrination where politicians ask voters to vote in leaders based on ethnicity.”

He said civic education provides much-needed teaching, reflection, and understanding of the complex elements of Kenya’s elections and governance system.