To steal or not steal the next election, that is the question

Ballot boxes in the past General Elections. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Nasa had also said it would announce the results from its tally centre, a potentially more explosive matter than just tallying.
  • The High Court also ruled that the IEBC in Nairobi or wherever, couldn’t change the results that were released at the polling stations.
  • In all the elections where the opposition has tried to do independent tallies, their centres have been raided by heavily armed security officers and taken apart.
  • Allowing independent tallying centres is more important as an indicator of the democratic trajectory that a country is on, rather than an anti-theft device.

Kenyans who don’t eat politics for breakfast and lunch must have wondered why there was a kerfuffle over whether the opposition National Super Alliance (Nasa) should have its own vote tally centre, or not, during the August elections.

In the end, the High Court ruled that it could.

Nasa had also said it would announce the results from its tally centre, a potentially more explosive matter than just tallying. In the end, after a meeting with the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), it was agreed that that one would be left to the IEBC.

But I will eat my hat if come election day, there is excitement, and they don’t.

CHANGE RESULTS

The High Court also ruled that the IEBC in Nairobi or wherever, couldn’t change the results that were released at the polling stations.

These actions minimise vote fraud only marginally, because election crooks will just shift their dirty tricks to other areas that are vulnerable – like vote suppression, bribery, and so forth.

The importance of these outcomes, however, is what they say above democratic progress. These are the kind of things that happen, for example, in Ghana, where late last year, President John Mahama lost an election after just one term in office, and happily let it go.

The last time we saw him he was in the Kenyan bushes in jeans and designer sunglasses, all smiles and relaxed, watching wild game on a safari holiday.

INDEPENDENT TALLIES

By contrast in Uganda, for example, independent vote tallying can be a do or die matter.

In all the elections where the opposition has tried to do independent tallies, their centres have been raided by heavily armed security officers and taken apart.

They carried away even the official return form from the agents of the main opposition party, Forum for Democracy (FDC), crippling its ability to launch an electoral challenge of the results.

Previous attempts by private FM stations – and even media websites – to run unofficial results from polling stations as happens in Kenya and we saw in Ghana, were also disrupted.

A radio station that persisted was taken off air.

Today, of course, you have social media and voters were posting polling station counts and other election proceedings on Facebook and Twitter. The powers that be in Uganda dealt with that, too. They blocked the Internet. End of story.

SECURITY RISK

In Ghana, after the police chief suggested the Internet could be shuttered if there was a security risk during the election, there was an outcry and fellows threatened to go to court. The police chief backed off! What kind of Africans are these Ghanaians?

Allowing independent tallying centres, therefore, is more important as an indicator of the democratic trajectory that a country is on, rather than an anti-theft device.

The main benefit of letting the opposition organise its own tallying, is that perhaps it is the only thing that gives us an insight into its ability to govern.

If you can set up a machinery to collect and tot up all the votes from polling stations in a country like Kenya, then clearly you are not a Mickey Mouse operation.

As of today, we have little else with which to gauge opposition competence.

That said, as we saw in Ghana, not only were both Mahama’s and now-President Nana Akufo-Addo’s camps busy holding press conferences every hour or so claiming victory, but the media simply ran away with the thing.

LOSE CONTROL

Yet, the Electoral Commission of Ghana (EC) – despite being hacked - did not lose control, and everyone agreed that, in the end, it would make the final call.

We see the same thing with American elections. The media announce everything, and if they get a result wrong they correct it, and life goes on.

But what happened in Ghana requires one thing – that the electoral commission have the level of credibility where what it says is the result, is believed more than what the media and politicians are claiming.

It is the existence of a politics and governance culture that makes it possible to appoint such an electoral commission, that ultimately delivers democracy and a civilised prosperous nation.

Long-term, then, the IEBC should not seek to preserve its monopoly on announcing results. It is a primitive prerogative.

What it should do is enter a credibility and moral race with anyone else that would possibly announce results, and become more believable than all of them.

The author is publisher of Africa data visualiser Africapedia.com and explainer site Roguechiefs.com. itter@cobbo3