What Kenya can learn from the UK elections

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.

Further, the current cliffhanger in London has led Lib Dems leader Nick Clegg to describe the British electoral system as “broke and incapable of reflecting the hopes and aspirations of the British people”. All across Britain, there is now talk of the need for comprehensive electoral reforms.

Trust may have been sufficient to anchor the British electoral process in times gone by, but emerging challenges certainly do make it highly vulnerable to breach.

One of the parliamentary candidates in the Birmingham area that I talked to on election eve did admit that while it may not be “corrupt”, the British system is possibly the “most corruptible system in the world”.

The vulnerabilities are inherent in such areas as potential for postal ballot fraud and possibilities of double voting due to the carte blanche provided for dual registration and absence of any requirement for identification at polling stations.

Indeed there have been previous incidents of postal ballot fraud that have led to convictions, and in the run up to the just concluded elections police launched investigations into allegations of similar fraud in Birmingham.

The thinly spread elections officers also raise potential for disenfranchisement and compromising integrity of ballot materials at polling stations.

Indeed many potential voters failed to cast their ballots on Election Day 2010 because of understaffing at polling stations. Hundreds of angry electors were turned away at close of polling at 10pm in many polling stations across the country

High voter turn out is an integral requirement for legitimate mandate, yet Britain has been witnessing a worrying trend in voter turn out.

In 2001 it was just over 59 per cent, it rose slightly to just over 61 per cent in 2005. It has risen to 65 per cent in 2010, but this has been compromised by the noted cases of voters being turned away from polling stations, dampening otherwise historic public enthusiasm for the polls.

Minority mandate

My observer team also did come across some disturbing reports of intimidation at polling stations. There were allegations that Liberal Democrats had been bullied and even physically intimidated by Labour supporters.

Overall, Britain may also want to examine the legitimacy of a system where a party can reign with minority mandate. In 2005, labour won 55 per cent of the parliamentary seats on a 35 per cent share of the votes cast. If David Cameron goes on to form the government, he will similarly govern Britain with 36 per cent of the vote cast.

But this is not a new thing. In 1974, Edward Heath attempted to govern with a minority of 297 seats and 37.9 per cent of the popular vote. When he failed to hammer out a coalition deal with the Lib Dems, he quit, allowing Labour leader Harold Wilson to govern with another minority of 301 seats and 37.2 per cent of the popular vote.

Like Britain, Kenya too has the first-past-the-post winner-takes-it-all system, but we have better safeguards to ensure broad mandate. A presidential candidate must not only garner a majority of the vote but must also get 25 per cent of the vote in at least five of the country’s eight regions.

Our proposed new constitution introduces the requirement for candidates to garner a clear majority of 50 per cent plus one votes, in addition to carrying a majority of the proposed 47 counties. These are safeguards against governing with minority mandate that raises questions of legitimacy.

While trust is good, caution and deterrent control are certainly better. Better arrangements for identification to forestall double voting and security for polling materials are interventions that can only raise the profile of integrity of British elections.

There is a saying among my people in Budalang’i that if you want to go fast, walk alone but if you want to go far, then walk with others.

Kenya must continue to walk with the rest of the democratic world to widen and deepen the culture and benefits of democracy even further.

Mr Namwamba is Budalang’i MP and Vice-Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Constitutional Reforms. He is in Britain as part of the Commonwealth International Observer Mission to the 2010 UK elections.