Mass registration has started election campaigns

Mishi Mboko is the short, vocal Woman Representative for Mombasa. I hear she is a good Muslim lady. The other day she amused a crowd when she implored women to deny their partners intimacy if they don’t register to vote. Something like that had been said by her party leader in Nyanza.

In Kirinyaga, a pastor with a revivalist church indicated he will be denying communion to worshippers who don’t display a voter’s slip. The edict will remain in force until February 15, after the voter registration rollout ends. The congregation was left in considerable shock. And Mavoko MP Patrick Makau has given notice to his constituents who are not registered voters that they will not get school bursaries for their children.

Registering voters has become the all-consuming political obsession nationally. Some of the methods being used to coerce people to register are legally dubious. Vihiga County had announced it would bar unregistered people from enjoying its services. A boda boda operator denying a customer a ride because she is not registered is one thing. But for a county government office to turn away a resident because of the same is another thing altogether.

The ongoing frenzy has seen presidential aspirants storm their strongholds to mobilise supporters. The season of full-fledged campaigns has actually begun. After the first week, Jubilee claimed bragging rights for registering more numbers in its core bases.

There is a big difference between the way the ruling party had planned its voter mobilisation and the way its opponents are going about it. Even before Uhuru Kenyatta landed in his Mt Kenya powerbase, and well before the voter registration exercise officially kicked off, Jubilee teams had fanned out across their strongholds on targeted “voter sensitisation” assignments.

FOLLOW-UP WANTING

Meantime, ODM is stuck with mass rallies. They generate excitement and hype, but the follow-up on the ground is wanting. One can feel Raila Odinga’s bewilderment over the relatively slow pace of registration in his strongholds compared to the enthusiasm at his rallies. There is a big disconnect.

Irritated Cord supporters last week were cursing Kalonzo Musyoka for causing “confusion” at a critical time of voter mobilisation by bringing up his pet issue that his co-principals should step down for him. Alas, give the Wiper leader some slack; he was probably just working on boosting voter numbers in Wiperland by upping his presidential chances.

To better set themselves apart from the UhuRuto pair, perhaps the Cord group should be moving together as a team in the voter mobilisation campaigns. This will give a sense of solidarity ahead of the very delicate task of trying to pick a joint presidential candidate.

Personally I haven’t registered. I eventually will before the February 14 deadline. Until then, I won’t take kindly to misguided traders telling me they can’t sell me stuff because I don’t have a voter’s slip. Incidentally I found out the electoral body no longer issues old-style voter cards.

February 14 happens to fall on Valentine’s Day. Watch out, ye young folks; you could lose a date if you don’t register to vote.

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The onset of the political season comes with a very unpleasant side-effect that drives property owners in urban centres up the wall. Well, the word wall is not just figurative in the circumstances. A lot of defacing of premises is happening as they are being spray-painted with names and slogans of political aspirants, especially those of MP and MCA wannabes.

Counties must enact harsh laws against this untidy behaviour. They should not just prosecute the spray painters but also the aspirants on whose behalf they do it. The culprits make the buildings look very ugly and they don’t bother to clean up after elections. The owners of the properties are left with an unwanted tab of repainting their premises.

Just drive around Nairobi estates and what you currently see is an eyesore.

Posters stuck randomly on buildings should also be discouraged. They leave a lot of litter all over the place. There should be guidelines on where campaign posters can be displayed. It should not be anywhere there is a bare wall.

Why can’t the politicians be forced to stick to removable billboards? They don’t have to be the huge expensive ones erected along highways. Small, tasteful billboards like are attached to street lamp-posts will do the job fine.

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