Parties Act checkmates political gamblers

The grim reality for political parties has finally set in.

The Political Parties Act 2011 is now operational, and its implications are dawning on party owners and the electorate in equal measure.

This could very well spell the end of briefcase parties and party hopping.

The big question, however, is how many of the 42 registered parties and the many others operating on interim licences will still be standing when Registrar of Political Parties Lucy Ndung’u begins to enforce the law from Tuesday.

Politicians are already up in arms. “We have been talking to the Registrar, pointing out that some of the provisions of the law are unconstitutional and amount to creating an elite club,” says Housing minister Soita Shitanda who is the party leader of New Ford-Kenya.

Speaking from China, Mr Shitanda said: “Small parties plan to go to court to seek a declaration that the law is unconstitutional as it denies a group of people the right of association.”

Fewer parties

There is every indication that the current number of political parties could be whittled down to as few as six if not less.

“The drafters of this law wanted to have few political parties competing for power. It is punitive to smaller parties and not accommodative within the spirit for which we fought for pluralism,” said Chama Cha Mwananchi chairman Koigi wa Wamwere.

“Look, many of the small parties will not be able to operate offices countrywide; they have no resources,” he said.

“This was in reference to Clause 7 (2) (f) (iii) requiring a party to show evidence of existing offices in at least 24 of 47 counties.

And the secretary-general of the little known Liberal Democratic Movement (LDM) Joram Ondere said even the requirement that parties pay Sh600,000 per year to the Registrar will force many to fold.

“It will be difficult to exist; many (parties) will fall by the wayside,” he said. LDM is one of the parties on an interim licence.

“Mr Ondere argues that selling a party’s ideology takes time and resources, so new parties should not be expected to have countrywide support overnight.

But Narc-Kenya leader Martha Karua is challenging the small parties to be aggressive and attain national stature.

“The law is the same as it was prior to last elections. If any party does not meet the threshold of national outlook, it must be eliminated,” she says.

The new law requires every party to pay a Sh600,000 subscription to the Registrar. Then every party must recruit and submit to the Registrar the names of 1,000 members in a majority of the 47 counties.

Furthermore, the parties must demonstrate to the Registrar the existence of offices countrywide or at least in 24 counties.

Meet requirement

This is done by furnishing the Registrar with the physical addresses of the county offices, officials and telephone numbers.

Among the existing parties, six may have the capacity to meet the two requirements — members in at least 24 counties plus physical offices and manpower.

These include ODM, PNU, Kanu, Narc-Kenya, ODM-Kenya and Safina. But there are even parties under the PNU alliance that face an uphill task in satisfying the two conditions. They include Ford-People, Ford-Kenya and New Ford-Kenya.

Another hard nut to crack will be the documentation parties are required to submit to the Registrar which binds both the party and the electorate into a common house.

The Registrar has to be given individual members’ details including date of birth, village, village elder’s name, county, and number of voter or national identity card or passport.

A person cannot register in more than one party or take part in the affairs of another party or promote the ideology, interests or policies of another political party.

If this happens, the person shall be deemed to have resigned from his previous party, and the Registrar will delete the name from that party’s roll.

The individual will also be ineligible to contest in subsequent elections since he or she will have no party. But it is here that the provision of contesting as an independent candidate comes in — but with a rider.

One has to give notice to the Registrar at least three months before a General Election that he or she has resigned their membership of the party. This is where party hopping has been dealt a blow.

“This clause (independents) is meant to protect party integrity and order in the way we manage our parties,” Ms Karua said.
Supporters of the new order argue it will eliminate ethnic, regional or faith-based parties.

Tribal parties

But Mr Wamwere argues that it is possible that tribal parties will still exist. “Look here, the Kikuyu, Luhya, Luo and even Kamba can plant a thousand people in the 47 counties to fulfil the requirement and look national,” he says.

He says that with financial resources, any of these communities needs only 47,000 people out of their millions of numbers to spread around the country for the purpose of registering a political party.

In fact, they do have those numbers in at least 24 counties around the country. Mr Shitanda acknowledged that although his party will try to comply, it has a difficult threshold to maintain in the short term.