Jubilee, IEBC in war of words over voter listing kits
Raphael Tuju, the Jubilee Party secretary-general and head of its secretariat. County party leaders have accused him of mismanagement. FILE PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
- IEBC said that the biometric voter registration kits would be distributed according to the expected number of voters to be registered as well as the population in the centres.
- In his statement, Mr Tuju had said that the party will no longer defend the electoral agency against attacks from the Opposition.
President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Jubilee Party on Friday accused the electoral commission of favouring opposition strongholds in the distribution of voter registration kits.
However, in a quick rejoinder, the commission accused the party of ethnic profile, saying the move was meant to discredit it.
The head of the Jubilee secretariat, Mr Raphael Tuju, had said that areas perceived to be National Super Alliance (Nasa) strongholds had “255 extra (voter registration) machines”.
He said that the party had written to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission to complain about the extra kits as well as the question of double registration of voters.
This has stirred debate this week after some voters were found to be sharing identical ID card numbers.
“Nasa/Cord areas have received a larger number of biometric voter registration machines and in our own computation, they have 255 extra machines,” Mr Tuju said at a press conference in Nairobi.
“We therefore request the Chebukati/Chiloba-led commission to explain the rationale that was used to arrive at the formula”.
When voter registration started last month, the commission said that the biometric voter registration kits would be distributed according to the expected number of voters to be registered as well as the population in the centres.
Each county assembly ward was to have a minimum of three kits and a maximum of 10 with a total of 7,793 kits sent out countrywide.
NECESSARY ACTION
Yesterday, Mr Andrew Limo, the commission’s manager of media and communications said in a statement: “When we started the voter registration campaign, we widely shared the formula of distribution of the kits. No one raised concerns.
"We have also indicated the efforts being made by the commission to clean up the register.”
“Instead of addressing the issues, the statement went further to profile officials of the electoral commission in a nuanced ethnic sense and making an attempt to associate them with political groupings.
"We take great exception with any form of profiling that undermines the integrity of the commission, and more importantly.”
In his statement, Mr Tuju had said that the party will no longer defend the electoral agency against attacks from the Opposition, and challenged the commission to stand up for itself.
“We cannot be in the business of defending the commission from Nasa when credibility of their impartiality is being undermined,” said Mr Tuju.
The accusations and counter-accusations came in the same week that the Opposition has asked the commission to come out clean on allegations of massive ID card fraud that Mr Odinga said had been used to shore up numbers in Jubilee strongholds.
Mr Odinga, the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) and Cord leader, said that the fraud was done through use of single digit, double and triple digit ID numbers.
There were claims that the IDs of retired presidents Daniel arap Moi (00000001) and Mwai Kibaki (00000002) had been used in the racket. The Cord leader also alleged that underage children in Jubilee strongholds were being registered as voters.
10 DAYS LEFT
Meanwhile, the Federation of Kenya Employers on Friday asked its members to encourage their employees to register as voters.
The federation said: “We call upon employers to support voter registration by encouraging their employees to register,” said the executive director, Ms Jacqueline Mugo.
She was speaking at the federation’s Waajiri House headquarters in Nairobi. In a statement, the federation also said that it will not condone incitement by politicians.
“Any action that disturbs the stability and peace of Kenya, is costly to us all. It affects the image of the country and the economy at large,” Ms Mugo said.
The electoral commission last week asked politicians to help mobilise more Kenyans to register so that it could achieve its target of listing six million new voters by February 14.
The deadline is now 10 days away.
“After 14 days of registering voters, preliminary data shows that a total of 1,539,879 Kenyans — representing 53.94 per cent of the Week II cumulative target — have applied to be registered as voters,” the commission said in its weekly updates.
“This represents 25 per cent of the upper target of six million voters and 38.5 per cent of the lower limit target of four million voters. This means that much work still needs to be done,” the commission said.
