Places like Siaya have witnessed some semblance of unrest witnessed 5 years ago, which the country is trying hard to ensure it happens not again.
But it seems we forget fast, and we mourn later.
Mutuma Mathiu has his own views expressed on the disturbing scenario presented by the party nominations in Kenya.
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The political party nominations are a complete, utter fiasco, and they tell us a great deal about Kenya’s political culture.
First, and this is what puts the lives of all us in danger, is that politicians are a law unto themselves.
They will take whatever reckless risk they want so long as it advances their political agenda.
The big coalitions – Cord, Jubilee and Amani – put off their nominations yesterday (Thursday).
Their calculations is that by doing so, it would deny their members an opportunity to defect should they lose in the primaries.
So, they all went out, in the manner of
sleep-walkers, to conduct a massive undertaking, almost in the same
shape as a general election, allowing themselves only a couple of hours
to do the polling, the counting, the tabulation of results, the
processing of results, the appeals, adjudication and re-runs and dispute
resolution.
All within 24 hours.
All within 24 hours.
It takes our usually incompetent electoral
commission months, if not years, of preparation and billions of
shillings to mount a similar undertaking, often with disastrous results.
The parties believed their own delusions of
adequacy and thought that they had the mechanisms to carry out a
nationwide election and have a credible result in a couple of hours.
The fundamental problem is that everything is
subordinated to the base wishes of politicians. We wrote a constitution
and laws which addressed exactly this kind of embarrassing chaos.
The Political Parties Act was written, I believe,
by reasonably smart people, to strengthen parties and free them from
being taken hostage by candidates at election time.
It required that one be a member of a party for at least six months before one is offered a ticket to run for office.
Therefore, they needed to have been party members in October 2012 for them to be nominated to run in this election.
In their own wisdom, and because they have no
discipline, class or sense of proportion, MPs started messing around
with those provisions to make life easier for themselves.
At first, they reduced the period to three months,
perhaps because they were worried that if they declared that they were
members of parties other than those that sent them to Parliament, they
would lose their jobs.
They messed with the law until that safety period
was completely removed, thus allowing political parties to attempt to
carry out nominations for the senate, MP, governor, and women’s
representative in a single day only hours to the close of the official
nomination period by the Independent Electoral Commission.
Meanwhile, the IEBC, which has independence boldly
displayed on its name and nowhere else, as well as the Registrar of
Political Parties, have been sitting on their hands and trying to
disappear into the chairs in the hope that no one notices them and takes
offence.
Those two institutions appear to be run by nancy
boys and inoffensive little ladies who can’t understand why people don’t
seem to get along – people to whom the position, the prestige and the
money is more important than the imperative need to exercise control
over a political system long gone rogue for the sake of our country.
We can’t move ahead unless we get organised. The nominations would suggest we are far from getting it.
