What Kenya can learn from the UK elections

• Candidates campaign with mature civility and decorum within strict confines of law

I was part of a team of international election observers from Commonwealth countries put together by the Royal Commonwealth Society and the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (UK) to observe the 2010 UK general election.

The team was composed of seven members of parliament from Malaysia, Jamaica, Ghana, Rwanda, Bangladesh, Sierra Leone and myself.

This was the first mission of its kind to observe the UK elections, providing a rare window into one of the world’s oldest democracies.

The 2010 election has put British democracy in sharp focus, handing this country its first hung parliament in 36 years.

With 306 seats (20 short of absolute majority), Conservative leader David Cameron is itching to form a government, but without a clear majority he has to sweat on the awaited response from the Liberal Democrats leader Nick Clegg, to whom he has made a “comprehensive” offer well aware that Clegg’s 57 MPs may well hold the key to No 10 Downing Street.

Labour’s Gordon Brown is hanging on the hope that the Lib Dems would agree to prop up his 258 MPs minority and enable him to exploit the queer constitutional lifeline that gives him first priority to form a coalition government in this kind of cliffhanger.

As is the case in other mature democracies, elections in Britain inspire confidence and respect because they are firmly anchored on the rule of law.

Unspoken covenant

Candidates campaign with mature civility and decorum within strict confines of the law with focus on issues. Electoral institutions serve country and citizen in accordance with the law. It is an unspoken covenant that disputes of whatever shade must be resolved according to the law.

Little wonder then that the stand-out feature of British democracy is the culture of trust in the electoral process, and one cannot help but marvel at the level of faith displayed by the people.

This has nurtured a process that is refreshingly calm, almost casual. I never saw a single police officer at any of the 10 polling stations I visited in Birmingham Yardley constituency.

You do not encounter hordes of party or candidate agents keeping vigil, hawk-eyed to “protect” their vote. Electors are not required to produce any form of identification, provided their names and addresses are on the voters roll. Postal ballots are issued on demand.

The electoral infrastructure is highly decentralised, with the 10-year-old electoral commission playing little more than policy and advisory roles.

The actual polls are handled by a network of election officials working under respective local authorities. Polling personnel are minimal — one polling clerk and a single presiding officer at each polling station.

There is no national voters roll — each of the 164 local authorities maintains a local register for each constituency. You can register as a voter at more than one place but not expected to double vote even though the deterrence against this is virtually theoretical.

These are clear manifestations of a mature culture of faith and honesty that emergent democracies like Kenya could borrow. It ensures calm and decorum, and forestalls the kind of suspicion, tension and violence that characterises Kenyan elections.

But Britain’s faith-powered system is not without inherent hiccups. The Council of Europe, writing in 2008 on the backdrop of the 2005 UK elections, observed that: “The UK’s rather arcane system of voter registration combined with postal voting on demand means that the UK delivers democratic elections despite the vulnerabilities in the electoral system”.

My observation of the 2010 elections gives good reasons to agree with this view.