PARADIGM SHIFT NEEDED IN VOTER EDUCATION AND REGISTRATION. By ndolo asasa Esq.

The national voter registration process MUST be accorded more time than the scheduled 45 days. Period.
Considering that voting is the most powerful tool of democracy worldwide at the disposal masses, used individually for global effect, it is worrying the casualness with which the voter registration is being handled by the process manager in Kenya. This takes even greater significance in Kenya where the voter register is being constructed afresh and there is the historic referendum on the constitution pending.
The Interim Independent Electoral Commission (IIEC) has indicated that there are 21 million eligible voters in Kenya as at now, but that the Commission will only be able to register at most 10 million voters, below half of the eligible voters in the ongoing exercise because of time constraints! The Prime Minister, Rt. Hon. Raila Odinga was reported to have said that the Commission should only seek for extension of the period if they do not meet their target! In this case 10 million. Then one is forced to asked whose target should be the remaining majority of 11 million? Why should the government intentionally set obstacles for a majority of Kenyans to ensure that they are disenfranchised?

What should be done instead is change the manner of handling public affairs placing the superiority of the people first.

The Constitutional Review Act should be amended immediately so as to allow the IIEC sufficient time to do its planning and carry out its mandate rather than wait for last minute rush. This will have the additional advantage of allowing the Committee of Experts (CoE) more time to conduct civic education as per their mandate and reach more people that will ensure more informed voting during the important constitution review referendum. The CoE has only 30 days to carry out this mandate.

Secondly, the IIEC must up its act in publicity of popularizing and mobilizing the public to participate in the voter registration exercise. A quick spot check shows that the IIEC has done dismally in giving this exercise visibility compared to the work that the now defunct ECK use to do on the same! Yet IIEC has more challenges than the ECK. The do not enjoy the benefit of building on an existing voter register. Most people are traumatized and view scramble for votes as the reason why Post Election Violence of 2007/8 occurred and thus do not wish to provide more reason by way of attractive large numbers for the political class by registering. There is a feeling around the country that referendum will be a no contest vote and thus no need to register. All these reasons require more concerted effort and time from IIEC to turn around and build confidence of Kenyans in the electoral system once again.

Third, the concept of voter education must be expanded by both the IIEC and Non State Actors (NSAs) to include more than just mobilizing and showing people how to cast a vote. Voter education must include educating the masses on the importance of registering as a voter and the not just electioneering. By the way it is very telling that significantly Civil Society Organisation are not keen on mobilizing people to register as voters but will overwhelmingly flood the scene with ‘voter education’ after the process is closed and voting in the referendum is more eminent!

Fourth. The people of Kenya are the fourth and most important organ of the constitutional review process. The referendum is the final stage of this process and all Kenyans should structurally be accorded a chance to participate by being allocated enough time for all those eligible to register as voters to do so. The government MUST not incite people to fight and or scramble for their rights including being voters by denying them sufficient time!

It is a horribly mediocre threshold for the government to intentionally put in place sufficient time to register less than a half of the eligible voters even with a very important national undertaking in the name of a referendum pending.

Parliament must not wait to either see failure in the face or prolific public anger to the needed good of extending the voter registration by at least 1 month well in advance and one of the ways on enhancing democracy in Kenya.

Ongoro Skirted the Truth in Critiquing Wafule Buke

Ongoro Skirted the Truth in Critiquing Wafule Buke
By ndolo asasa Esq

Ongoro Wa’ Munga, the acclaimed author of ‘Sunrise at Midnight’ in a response to the altercation between Wafula Buke and Miguna-Miguna intentionally misrepresented issues to favour a Miguna outlook.

While acknowledging the presence of lots of language in the said article – he termed it a rebuttal, information was not in equal measure, less facts.

I wish to put a few of this in proper perspective;
1. Wafula Buke is the Personal Assistant of Hon. William Samoei arap Ruto and he has never attempted to keep it secret from anybody who cares to know.
2. To the best of my knowledge Buke has NEVER been jailed in Kenya, Uganda or anywhere else. In Kenya, he was detained in exclusion at Kamiti Maximum Prison after a judicial mistrial in the late 80’s. In Uganda he was held in a police station, NOT JAILED, for a short period as the only means of keeping away from being kidnapped and or being killed by the Kenyan security forces and embarrassing the host nation – Ongoro can check the facts with Ugandan Authorities if he cares.
It is important to note that being held by security forces was and still is a standard practice when dealing with persons on the run from an outside country especially where the involved persons do not have the appropriate paperwork and or /not social high fliers.
3. Buke was NEVER in Tanzania! Again check with the Tanzanian government if you care.
4. The UNHCR issue is also a creation of Mr. Ongoro as Mr. Buke has never, to the best of my knowledge of him, which by the way is good compared to many people, applied to UNHCR for refugee status. Once more, check with UNHCR as the records must be available somewhere.
On the flipside, assuming that Buke had actually applied to be a refugee, why would UNHCR find it more plausible to grant the refugee status to a person of lesser stature in the eyes of the student leadership and the dictatorial government and deny the more senior factor person? After all Miguna-Miguna was just the Treasurer to Buke and even after the initial arrest, the government found it best to acquit him of being a threat to the nation- again this is documented, or is it not Mr. Ongoro?
5. In the Buke article, I beg to be guided by Ongoro where Buke imputes his tribulations to Miguna-Miguna!
6. There is a Swahili saying, “Kufa kufaana”. It is this that Ongoro refers to as Miguna’s ‘amazing political intuition’. The intuition that made him escape incarceration by KANU, the intuition that made him ‘work hard’ in Canada while Buke wasted himself away in detention at Kamiti, in the non prospective Uganda and in the nascent political struggles on the ground! The same intuition that kept Miguna-Miguna in Canada from 1992 to 2008, when, he by the same intuition landed the obviously lucrative and envious position of Special Advisor to the Premier!
7. And yes, talking about envy, why should Buke and any person for that matter not be envious of Miguna? Considering that there are those who worked as hard and many who worked harder and sacrificed more than Miguna-Miguna in efforts to liberate our good country but only ended up dead, maimed, permanently labeled misfits, currently considered irrelevant dinosaurs seeking attention and or even faceless and jobless.

In conclusion, I find it difficult to accept it but I guess I will have to live with it that makers of history are more often than not too busy to write the history. As Alex Haley would say, ‘…it is the killers of our heroes and heroines that write history’

ndolo asasa Esq
ndoloasasa@gmail.com

The Illusion of The Hague Option for Kenya

First. According to the Rome Statutes that establishes the International Criminial Court (ICC), in Kenya famously referred to as The Hague, the framework is meant to take charge where the rule of law has failed or the state is unwilling to take action as a governance supporting mechanism.

As such, does Kenya in the strictness of the sense, a failed state warrantying the hoped for attention and urgency by some Kenyans? What with Kenyan education and judiciary producing one of the ICC judges? Most of the legal counsels at the Rwanda and a Sierra Leone prosecutions? Being chosen to provide custody for the Arusha Tribunal proceedings?

Second. On a more global level; Were the Rome Statutes meant to be the global cutodians of law and order or a prod to ensure that various actors are threatened enough to demonstrate effort of enhancing true law and order?

Am persuaded that the latter is the real reason for the establishment of the said statutes.

In that case then, No Kenyan is being taken to the Hague!

Why? The Grand Coalition, the Principals, Parliament and even the Civil Society are all 'really' making efforts to address the cause of the Post Election Violence and have the culprits punished, embarrased, contained and dettered!!! What with the reconciliation efforts, the Interim Independent Electoral Commission? Truth Justice and Reconcilliation Commission, The National Land Policy, The National Intergration and Cohesion Commission, the debate in the police, new parliamentary standing orders and a Committee of Experts on the new constitution with its road map to boot! The civic education processes and initiatives? The various joint peace meetings in the frontier zones? Rudi Nyumbani? The picking up economy and development agenda!

Third. Considering the so far already indicted criminals by ICC sill at large, how much priority can the Kenyan case hold over the others. Why would and should it be given priority over the cases that have been pending arrest and or prosecution over the 5 or more years? Will the capacity of ICC tremendously be increased just to speed up the Kenyan process? Will the other cases be ignored by duration and severity just to appease the Kenyan wish for a speedy process?

Forth. The difference between murder, manslaughter and a crime of passion is always determined by the motive, intention and circumstances. Will both Raila and Kibaki, their win or lose not be the main cause of the atrocities and as such make them the prime movers of the post-election violence and therefore truly the first suspects? Is the ICC prepared and willing to take this route with all the scary possibilities it potends? i.e. Will the Hague really go beyond where the local tribunal will dare tread?

Finally. Who is funding the ICC? How much business are they doing with the Kenyan nation? Could speedy action upset this apple cart, taking into cognisance the exhibited potential of the Kenyan business potential considerinmg the opening up of South Sudan, Ethiopia and possible management of Somalia put side by side with the global economic recession that is heavily being felt elsewhere?

Verdict:

The Hague, in the Kenyan case, is a scarecrow that done its duty. It is Sudan, Iran and Eriterea that have not felt it. The Hague is an illusion that we, Kenyans, must now cease to pursue as it is now superflous or at best an illusion; the only remaining thing is to expose how useless it is NOW in the creation and realisation of the Kenyan nation if the scare, its principal role, fails to jolt us to seek logical solutions our nationhood needs.

ndolo asasa Esq

Welcome/Karibuni

Dear good people of the world,

During creation era talking to God was the tool of trade, just as stones were the tool of trade during the stoneage and agricultural materials the facilitating tools for industrial revolution: today space is the equivalent.

Here I endeavour- with your help- to carve space for my generation to identify, nurture, confront, manage, secure and take charge of its fate and the future; where we will be the only ones and progeny to live in to a better than now, BY FAR.

I intend to be calling on you to regularly demystify the many international, national and local governance and leadership mazes webbed to keep us engaged and not prepared to take up our responsiblity of squarely placing the future in our hands.

On this blog I invite you to be brutally honest, divinely courageous, practically creative, sharply specific, reflectively contemporary and focussed to the prize.

My hand is stretched, hold me and assist to secure space big enough for all the rich imaginations that we rightfully hold.

Thank you, be blessed and welcome. Karibu, na karibu tukaribishe ufanisi kwa kuandaa fursa mwafaka pote na popote.

Truly yours,


ndolo asasa Esq