Resolve sticking points before next elections

This week marked exactly one year to the next elections. While the country is fixated on the matters being resolved at the leafy Windsor hotel, I want to suggest that there are several matters that should concern us that are not "contentious", but which require urgent attention as they will no doubt gravely impact the next elections.

The first is the disclosure by the National Registration Directorate that there are 9.2 million Kenyans who have been issued with Identity Cards who are yet to be registered as voters.

When I heard this fact I was flabbergasted. Until then I had assumed, like many Kenyans, that the principal problem of non-registered voters was the issuance of Identity Cards.

I was therefore an enthusiastic demander of a more vibrant ID issuance programme as the delays in issuance was prejudicing Kenyans' access to their political rights.

What these figures now disclose is that whereas the ID issuance issue is still important, the greater threat to the content of our democracy is the failure to register nearly half of eligible voters.

To understand the scale of this crisis one must remember that President Uhuru Kenyatta was voted into office by 6.1 million Kenyans.

The eligible voters out there have the capacity to elect a President and their registration as voters can tilt the election one way or the other. This is the ultimate tyranny of numbers! I am shocked that politicians are not using every trick in the book to get these Kenyans on to the roll!

This is however bigger than politicians; it is a national crisis that requires an immediate "Marshall plan" by the IEBC supported by both the National and County Governments in partnership with the political establishment to invest whatever resources are necessary to ensure that the bulk of these Kenyans register to vote at the earliest possible time.

The second issue that must concern Kenyans is the absence of structured civic education to assist voters in making informed choices of their leadership in 2017.

Soon the campaign season is going to arrive. When it does, the opportunity for non-partisan civic education will be gone. This is the moment therefore for the critical conversation on the character of leadership that the country will need going into elections 2017. In the last elections

I recall the very intense campaign that defined the kind of person that people should elect as Governor. It was ingrained in people's consciousness that a Governor would be a Chief Executive overseeing programme execution and financial management.

This position, it was oft repeated needed a manager, not a politician. It is therefore not surprising that a majority of Governors are non-career politicians. Five years later the number of politicians that have expressed interest in the Governor's seat should be cause for re-evaluation and a fresh campaign that once again defines the characteristics of this and other offices.

We have for example now learned that the Member of the County Assembly, is no longer just a Councilor. An MCA is a planner, an evaluator of budgets, overseer of the executive and numerous other obligations. We must now deliver to the consciousness of the voter the kind of person that deserves the office of MCA, long before the individuals who will seek office arrive and confuse the electorate.

Finally, and related to the above is the issue of the gender component in our elections. The Constitution has required that no gender can hold more two thirds in leadership positions. In the last elections, the gender deficit in the county leadership was so huge that we ended up filling it with more than a thousand nominated MCAs.

This is unsustainable and an unnecessary drain on the public purse. I do not subscribe to the notion that the solution to this reality is to scrap the gender rule. I believe that Kenyans must be encouraged to close the gender gap by electing more capable and competent women.

Elections 2017 must be on quality of leadership and must deliberately seek out women who have leadership capacity. If we were to invest in these areas we may just have not just a free and fair election, but one that guarantees quality in our politics.