Party primaries should be run by the IEBC and held on weekends

After days spent mocking their ODM counterparts, the boot was on the other foot on Friday when the Jubilee party began its own nominations.

There was, as expected, chaos and confusion and it was the turn of ODM supporters to laugh at their Jubilee rivals.

This was all predictable. No party in Kenya has the internal capacity to conduct high-stakes primaries, essentially mini-elections, in different parts of the country on the same day.

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission is the only agency with the ability to undertake such an exercise.

A friend made an observation that goes beyond the technical. In a city like Nairobi, how many people that have a regular job take part in primaries?

PROCESS FLAWED

He argued that the electoral process is flawed because the winners of these nomination exercises stand a huge chance of clinching office on election day since most voters will cast their ballots along party lines.

Yet the decision on who will clinch the party ticket of the big parties is made by a few people, mostly layabouts, who have nothing better to do on that day.

His suggestion was that to drive voter turnout up, there should be a rule that only those that participate in party primaries can vote during the General Election.

This would be controversial and hard to implement. An alternative is to require that all nomination balloting, particularly for parties that have a large enough presence in parliament to attract public funding, should be conducted by the IEBC.

Primaries should be carried out on weekends to ensure maximum turnout. Details on funding and timelines, to ensure that the exercise does not clash with preparations for the General Election, can be worked out in time.

DEEPEN DEMOCRACY

It is unlikely, after all, that in future elections the electoral commission will be as new and inexperienced as the one now in office.

In a country where “six-piece” voting (backing the candidate of the party which is strongest in your region) is so prevalent, the current system does nothing to deepen democracy.

Instead, it tips the scales in favour of those that can mobilise people with nothing else to do on a typical weekday to line up and back them in shambolic nominations.

In this respect, the IEBC and the courts displayed wisdom in allowing independent candidates who fail at the nomination stage to go to the polls, because being locked out after such sham exercises would be a travesty of justice.

 
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The provocations and counter-provocations between North Korea and the American administration have caused alarm around the world.

The Washington Post describes this as the closest two nuclear-armed nations have come to war since the Soviets and the Americans nearly rained missiles on each other’s cities in 1961.

What is happening? This is a confrontation between two powers which both know what they want but only one has a clear path to arriving at its goal.

North Korea, which fought a bitter war with the Americans and their allies in South Korea during the Cold War, is determined to develop nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles that can land in American cities. They seem to have the technical capability and raw materials to eventually arrive at that goal.

The North Koreans claim their nuclear programme serves as a shield against American actions aimed at effecting regime change in Prongyang, never mind the fact most North Koreans are impoverished and food-insecure, with most of the country’s funds being spent on its vast army.

ATTAINING GOAL

The Americans also know what they want. They seek to stop the North Koreans from attaining their goal. But they have no good options on the table.

If they launch a pre-emptive attack, the North Koreans could rain missiles on the cities of American allies, chiefly South Korea and maybe Japan, with the risk of millions of deaths.

The Americans would need to ask for the endorsement of South Korea, in particular, before staging any action and it is unlikely this would be granted.

But the Americans consider a North Korea with the capacity to unleash nuclear Armageddon on American cities an intolerable prospect and they are determined to stop it, although knowing how to do this is another matter.

BE DIPLOMATIC

The wisest option might be a diplomatic one, favoured by China, North Korea’s ally.

Demand, they suggest, that North Korea freezes its programme in exchange for gradual lifting of economic sanctions.

With the egos at play in Kim Jong Un’s Pyongyang and Donald Trump’s White House, this route does not seem especially attractive at the moment.

The fate of the world, as one commentator put it, is in the hands of two unstable, spoilt brats with crazy hairstyles.

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