Issack Hassan: We’ll overcome General Election challenges

As the new Independent Electoral and Boundary Commission (IEBC) team appointed last week awaits to assume office tomorrow, Senior Political Writer Stephen Makabila spoke to Chairman Ahmed Issack Hassan on its preparedness and challenges ahead. Among plans lined up is doubling the number of polling centres from 28,000 to 56,000.

What are the key priorities of IEBC now that your team has been officially appointed?

The new team is expected to be received and briefed by the secretariat. They will study Interim Independent Electoral Commission’s (IIEC) final reports and draw a work plan and a roadmap. Basically, I see the IEBC starting to operate immediately. The various activities and processes that the commission is required to implement before the next General Election are diverse and subject to time and resource constraints.

Many Kenyans eagerly await the delimitation of the proposed 80 new constituencies. When are you likely to embark on this?

Article 89(2) of the Constitution gives IEBC the mandate to review the names and boundaries of constituencies and wards. For purposes of the first review however, section 2(2) of the fifth schedule of the IEBC Act guides the Commission in terms of the scope of the issues to be addressed in the first review.

In so doing, the Act limits the Commission to redistribute the wards and administrative units within the affected constituencies, as may be appropriate.

The Act further mandates the commission to address the issue of the proposed constituencies that fall outside the population quota envisaged in Article 89(6) of the Constitution, while at the same time recognising the provisions of Article 89(7)(b) of the Constitution regarding progressive realisation of equal population quota in each constituency and ward.

The commission is bound by the law to use the IIBRC report as its primary reference material and the Parliamentary Select Committee report as the secondary reference material in this first review.

At the end of the four months, the Act sets aside 30 days after the publication of the commission’s interim report to allow the public to question/challenge any aspect of the report through the High Court. The High Court is then allowed 30 days to hear and determine the issue.

How soon will the merging between the defunct IIEC and IIBRC technical team be? And what are the likely challenges in the delimitation of the 80 constituencies?

The IEBC Act provides for the transition of IIEC secretariat to the IEBC subject to the Constitution. The former IIBRC staff will be given an opportunity to apply and join IEBC. The relevant staff for the boundaries delimitation and IIEC will join to become IEBC secretariat. Some of the challenges include tension and dissatisfaction from those who feel shortchanged in the new constituencies and wards. Voter education on boundaries delimitation is also quite a challenge.

Will the IEBC carry on IIEC’s plans of a mock General Election, and when?

Yes, the mock elections planned in Kajiado North and Malindi constituencies will go on at a go. IEBC settles down and the work programme is drawn.

What reasons make you feel it would be better for the country to hold General Elections in December next year?

Like all Kenyans, we would like certainty on the election date, which the Constitution has to some extent provided, save for the ambiguities in its interpretation. As a commission, we will have no choice but to conduct the elections on the date prescribed by the law.

However, it is important to recognise that the laws provide several statutory timelines within which some activities and processes must be undertaken before the elections. The IEBC is bound to finish the first review of boundaries in six months ( that is four months to produce the report and two months for any challenges and court determination). Assuming there are no delays, this will take IEBC up to May 2012 to have the new boundaries in place.

If the elections are to be held in August 2012, this will leave the commission with three months to complete all the remaining processes to enable it hold the elections, including: Mapping out the new constituencies and wards boundaries and allocating fresh codes; Carrying out intensive voter education on the new boundaries and to sensitising Kenyans towards fresh voter registration; Conducting fresh voter registration or rationalising the old voters’ details to the new boundaries and developing a new voters’ register; Putting out the voters’ register for inspection by the public for at least 30 days (as per the Elections Act).

The new voters’ register will be required by political parties to harmonise their party membership with the provisions of the new Constitution; such as to have their members who are registered voters within the newly created and mapped boundaries.

These are all statutory processes that have strict timelines that must be met by law. Besides, political parties may also fail to meet their statutory requirements because of the time constraints.

What are the likely challenges if the Supreme Court settles for August?

The election will be then be held on August 14th. The commission will have to compress its programmes and electoral processes and reduce some of the timelines to accommodate this date. It could mean a hurried and strenuous process but we will strive to get it right.

What are the chances of the country embracing electronic voting and tallying in the next General Election?

The elections will not be done electronically. However, the Commission hopes to have this vision realised in 2017. In the meantime, electronic registration and electronic transmission of results will be deployed for the upcoming General Election.

Sometimes people confuse electronic voter registration with electronic voting. We want to start building a register that has electronic data of an individual before we can speak of voting electronically; that is without using ballot papers.

When will voter registration kick-off and what is the anticipated number of Kenyans likely to vote in the election?

I won’t give specific dates now but new commission will determine this in their work plan. We urge those who do not have ID cards and have reached the voting age of 18, to go and get IDs.

When we start the registration exercise, we will want those who have not registered to do so promptly.

How is the IEBC going to ensure 3.4 million Kenyans in the Diaspora are registered as voters for the 2012 General Election?

A comprehensive concept paper has been developed on Diaspora registration and voting. For a start, we will use our embassies and high commissions. Later we will review for better delivery of service.

The new Commission will also determine this in their work plan.

We shall use the embassies and high commissions as a starting point before reviewing these procedures for better service delivery for the Diaspora voters.

Given the number of elective positions in the next elections, by what percentage are polling centres likely to go up from the current 28,000?

At present, an average polling station has about 700 voters for the three ballots cast previously.

This translated to 28,000 polling stations. Since we shall be having six ballots, it will be necessary to reduce the number of voters per polling station by half. This will increase the polling stations to over 56,000.