Civil Societies Thoughts on Election Preparedness

By John Kariuki

With 22 days left to the General Elections, civil society organisations under the auspices of Uchaguzi platform have the following thoughts on election preparedness.

Joshua Changwony is the Executive Director of Constitution and Reform Education Consortium (CRECO). He says,

“Uchaguzi Platform is concerned about the management and transmission of election results, as well as testing of the requisite election technology. We urge Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission(IEBC) to ensure that gaps and failures noted in the previous exercise are eliminated. The country cannot afford another systematic failure as was witnessed in the first simulation exercise that was carried out on 9th June 2022 as there is no time to undertake another third one without completely eroding trust in the systems.”

Addressing the media during a Joint Civil Society Statement on Election Preparedness and Other Pertinent Electoral Issues in Kenya, Joshua added,

“The Uchaguzi platform is also concerned by the number of electoral offences happening in the public without any serious action being taken by the relevant institutions. For example, the IEBC Chairperson is on record saying that some IEBC officials were involved in irregular transfer of voters to particular voting stations and assured that action would be taken against them.”

Among other issues the consortium addressed include urging the IEBC to publicise the KPMG Audit report and fastrack the process of sharing the aggregated register of voters for inspection by interested individuals and organisations.

Other members of the civil societies included Sheila Masinde who is the executive director Transparency International Kenya and Franklin Mukwanja the Executive Director of Center for Multiparty democracy Kenya.