Green Movement claims IEBC ill prepared to manage August polls » Capital News

NAIROBI, Kenya Feb 14 — The United Green Movement (UGM) party has warned that the August 9th polls risk being mismanaged if the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) moves at the current pace in putting in place preparatory measures.

Augustino Neto, UGM’s co-party leader faulted the commission for not interrogating the huge shortfall when it comes to registering new voters ahead the August 9 polls.

IEBC failed to meet its target after registering 1,031,645 voters against 4.5 million voters targeted in the just-concluded Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise.

“The ECVR Phase II exercise had realized a total of 1,031, 645 new voters. This is at 22 per cent of the target! It simply shows that the Commission had no strategy to meet its target, given that in 2017 they registered only 19.6 per cent of the target, and in 2013, 17 per cent of the target,” said Neto.

UGM now states that the Wafula Chebukati team has failed in its voter education mandate which has led to the shortfall.

“It simply means that 3.5 million Kenyans who would decide the direction their country is going, are not going to have that chance. The Commission should use the provisions of Section 5 of the Elections Act, 2011 to ensure that the 3.5 million voters are registered by end of May 2022,” Neto stated.

The former Ndhiwa MP claimed that the poll body might be ill prepared for the poll as they have proposed changes in electoral laws as captured in the Electoral Amendment Bill of 2022.

The poll body had proposed changes to have a complementary mechanism of voter identification and transmission of election results to create an avenue for both manual and electronic system to be used in the voting and tallying process.

“The net result is that, there might not be a complimentary mechanism for both voter identification and results transmission,” Neto noted.

“Why would the Commission make such important proposals so late in the day? Was the intention not to correct the wrongs of the 2017 General Elections? To what end and who then benefits from this kind of acquiescence?” Neto posed.

Such changes, Neto argued will lead to a disputed election which will ultimately cost the taxpayers.

“Failure to do the above, amongst many others, would be subjecting Kenyans to an election that does not meet the Constitution and other legal thresholds, opening it up to be contested in several fronts. You do not want to do that with a transitional election as the ramifications would be dire,” he stated.