IEBC decries voter apathy in poll violence areas

Voters in areas that experienced post election violence have kept off registration centres due to fear of victimisation.

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) chairman Issack Hassan said Tuesday those employed in tea plantations across the country fear reprisal attacks on account of whom they are perceived to have voted for.

IEBC clerks have tried taking the biometric voter registration kits (BVR) to market centres and cinema halls where the workers retreat after work, but their efforts have not paid off.

"This is evidence that the country has not healed from the last election violence and Kenyans should ask themselves why,” he said during an independent candidates' forum at the Silver Springs Hotel, Nairobi.

The Rift Valley was the most hit by the 2007/08 post election violence that left 1,133 people dead and 650,000 displaced from their homes.

The electoral commission has been grappling with low registration numbers since the exercise kicked off on November 17, but the IEBC is expecting the numbers to pick up during the last week as voter registration comes to an end.

Mr Hassan said the kits from France allowed voters to vote only in wards where they had registered, saying it was an oversight that the electoral body wished to rectify in future to remove the fear that people working in areas outside their places of birth would fear to vote on account of ethnic or political affiliations.