Kenya, election overturned; to be redone
7 views
Skip to first unread message
Warren D Smith
Sep 3, 2017, 12:52:05 AM9/3/17
to electio...@googlegroups.com
Why did Kenya's Supreme Court annul the elections?
Al Jazeera editorial 2 sept 2017
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/09/kenya-supreme-court-annul-elections-170902115641244.html
In the face of international pressure to ignore flagrant electoral
violations, the court decided to stick to democracy.
[Kenya's Supreme Court declared the August 8 elections invalid on September 1] [
by
Nanjala Nyabola, writer and political analyst based in Nairobi, Kenya.
Democracy is a marathon, and Kenya just delivered one of the most
decisive victories for African democracy in recent history. Marathons
are, after all, our thing.
In a 4-2 decision, the Supreme Court determined that the recently
concluded presidential election "was not conducted in accordance with
the Constitution and … is invalid".
In practical terms, this means that Kenyans will have a second
presidential election within the next 60 days - expensive in terms of
money and time, but worth it for a clear and decisive declaration that
democracy in Kenya is maturing.
The August 8 vote was a deeply flawed election. Yet weighty
assumptions at home and abroad about how democracy is supposed to work
in Africa prevented many from seeing that.
Critics were accused of being spoilers or "perennial losers". If they
pointed out one of the many problems of the electoral process, they
were labelled "tribalists", or overly demanding. Apparently, African
citizens should be happy about "good enough" elections and shouldn't
demand more. The public was told that credible elections are simply
not for this part of the world. The eyes watching Kenya's election
were so focused on the prospect of violence that they were prepared to
force a clearly problematic process onto Kenyans.
The ruling of the Supreme Court exposes how faulty this minimalist
logic is. It underscores that what the elections commission,
international observers and some international press wanted to write
off as "irregularities" were actually significant procedural failures
that undermined the core of Kenyan democracy.
The discontent and criticism of the election were never about Raila
Odinga losing it as some have alleged -- it was about having a winner
who was worthy of the title "democratically elected". And the Supreme
Court found that the Independent Elections and Boundaries Commission
(IEBC) simply did not deliver on basic democratic principles of
transparency and rule of law that should guide any election.
With this ruling, the court has vindicated advocates for credibility,
arguing that Kenyans deserved free, fair and credible -- not just
"good enough" -- elections.
The court has 21 days to deliver a detailed ruling, but it seems one
of the main problems with the election was IEBC's ignoring many
aspects of the Constitution and electoral law. Fundamentally, this
ruling was about reminding the IEBC that it cannot pick and choose
which parts of the constitution to obey.
In court, lawyers for the IEBC struggled to give good reasons about
why the core tools of electoral management dictated by law and
publicly promised to voters were not actually used during the
election. For example, IEBC lawyers shockingly argued that the
tallying website public.iebc.or.ke on which local and international
reporting about the election relied was "not the public portal" that
the IEBC promised, and they never told the court what that website was
and why it existed.
The ruling was also about glaring errors that, on one hand, the IEBC
argued were not enough to alter the outcome of the election, but on
the other, critics argued, compromised the integrity of the whole
system. For example, the IEBC conceded that they did not use the
electronic transmission system they were required to, and instead
relied on text messages and photographs of manually filled forms as
sources of information.
The process of tallying was also problematic because the IEBC seemed
to ignore much of the law regulating it. The commission lawyers argued
that the forms used for reporting results from the different regions
were all available in time for the announcement of the results on
August 11. Yet as late as August 14, the IEBC was still asking the
opposition to "be patient" while it tries to make the forms available
to them for verification. How was the final result generated on the
basis of forms that were not available until several days after the
election?
A number of the forms provided by the IEBC also didn't have serial
numbers or bar codes, and some were simple lined paper with numbers
scrawled on them. Lawyers for the IEBC conceded these irregularities
but argued they were too small to have affected the whole outcome. But
in court, the chief justice pushed back: "If some of the forms have
bar codes, then shouldn't all of the forms have bar codes?"
After all, this was one of the most expensive elections in the world.
Almost $500 million or $28 per capita in taxpayer money was spent on
the premise that the process would be brought closer to perfection.
Wasn't the money enough to get barcodes?
But beyond establishing high democratic standards for elections in
Kenya, this ruling was also about reaffirming judicial independence.
It put Chief Justice David Maraga in history books as the first
African chief justice to oversee the annulment of election results.
Less than a year into his term, there were already strong indications
during a testy pre-election period that judicial independence was of
utmost importance to the Maraga-led court. At least three times in
under 12 months, the chief justice and the judicial service commission
issued statements defending the independence of the judiciary after
attacks from the president and the National Assembly majority leader.
All in all, the September 1 ruling was good news for Kenyan democracy.
"The greatness of a nation relies on its fidelity to the Constitution
and adherence to the rule of law", said Chief Justice Maraga, giving
Kenya's democracy marathon a second wind, a massive victory that
hopefully translates into a better process and stronger democracy in
Kenya and beyond.
Nanjala Nyabola is a Kenyan writer and political analyst based in
Nairobi, Kenya.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not
necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
--
Warren D. Smith
http://RangeVoting.org <-- add your endorsement (by clicking
"endorse" as 1st step)
Al Jazeera editorial 2 sept 2017
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/09/kenya-supreme-court-annul-elections-170902115641244.html
In the face of international pressure to ignore flagrant electoral
violations, the court decided to stick to democracy.
[Kenya's Supreme Court declared the August 8 elections invalid on September 1] [
by
Nanjala Nyabola, writer and political analyst based in Nairobi, Kenya.
Democracy is a marathon, and Kenya just delivered one of the most
decisive victories for African democracy in recent history. Marathons
are, after all, our thing.
In a 4-2 decision, the Supreme Court determined that the recently
concluded presidential election "was not conducted in accordance with
the Constitution and … is invalid".
In practical terms, this means that Kenyans will have a second
presidential election within the next 60 days - expensive in terms of
money and time, but worth it for a clear and decisive declaration that
democracy in Kenya is maturing.
The August 8 vote was a deeply flawed election. Yet weighty
assumptions at home and abroad about how democracy is supposed to work
in Africa prevented many from seeing that.
Critics were accused of being spoilers or "perennial losers". If they
pointed out one of the many problems of the electoral process, they
were labelled "tribalists", or overly demanding. Apparently, African
citizens should be happy about "good enough" elections and shouldn't
demand more. The public was told that credible elections are simply
not for this part of the world. The eyes watching Kenya's election
were so focused on the prospect of violence that they were prepared to
force a clearly problematic process onto Kenyans.
The ruling of the Supreme Court exposes how faulty this minimalist
logic is. It underscores that what the elections commission,
international observers and some international press wanted to write
off as "irregularities" were actually significant procedural failures
that undermined the core of Kenyan democracy.
The discontent and criticism of the election were never about Raila
Odinga losing it as some have alleged -- it was about having a winner
who was worthy of the title "democratically elected". And the Supreme
Court found that the Independent Elections and Boundaries Commission
(IEBC) simply did not deliver on basic democratic principles of
transparency and rule of law that should guide any election.
With this ruling, the court has vindicated advocates for credibility,
arguing that Kenyans deserved free, fair and credible -- not just
"good enough" -- elections.
The court has 21 days to deliver a detailed ruling, but it seems one
of the main problems with the election was IEBC's ignoring many
aspects of the Constitution and electoral law. Fundamentally, this
ruling was about reminding the IEBC that it cannot pick and choose
which parts of the constitution to obey.
In court, lawyers for the IEBC struggled to give good reasons about
why the core tools of electoral management dictated by law and
publicly promised to voters were not actually used during the
election. For example, IEBC lawyers shockingly argued that the
tallying website public.iebc.or.ke on which local and international
reporting about the election relied was "not the public portal" that
the IEBC promised, and they never told the court what that website was
and why it existed.
The ruling was also about glaring errors that, on one hand, the IEBC
argued were not enough to alter the outcome of the election, but on
the other, critics argued, compromised the integrity of the whole
system. For example, the IEBC conceded that they did not use the
electronic transmission system they were required to, and instead
relied on text messages and photographs of manually filled forms as
sources of information.
The process of tallying was also problematic because the IEBC seemed
to ignore much of the law regulating it. The commission lawyers argued
that the forms used for reporting results from the different regions
were all available in time for the announcement of the results on
August 11. Yet as late as August 14, the IEBC was still asking the
opposition to "be patient" while it tries to make the forms available
to them for verification. How was the final result generated on the
basis of forms that were not available until several days after the
election?
A number of the forms provided by the IEBC also didn't have serial
numbers or bar codes, and some were simple lined paper with numbers
scrawled on them. Lawyers for the IEBC conceded these irregularities
but argued they were too small to have affected the whole outcome. But
in court, the chief justice pushed back: "If some of the forms have
bar codes, then shouldn't all of the forms have bar codes?"
After all, this was one of the most expensive elections in the world.
Almost $500 million or $28 per capita in taxpayer money was spent on
the premise that the process would be brought closer to perfection.
Wasn't the money enough to get barcodes?
But beyond establishing high democratic standards for elections in
Kenya, this ruling was also about reaffirming judicial independence.
It put Chief Justice David Maraga in history books as the first
African chief justice to oversee the annulment of election results.
Less than a year into his term, there were already strong indications
during a testy pre-election period that judicial independence was of
utmost importance to the Maraga-led court. At least three times in
under 12 months, the chief justice and the judicial service commission
issued statements defending the independence of the judiciary after
attacks from the president and the National Assembly majority leader.
All in all, the September 1 ruling was good news for Kenyan democracy.
"The greatness of a nation relies on its fidelity to the Constitution
and adherence to the rule of law", said Chief Justice Maraga, giving
Kenya's democracy marathon a second wind, a massive victory that
hopefully translates into a better process and stronger democracy in
Kenya and beyond.
Nanjala Nyabola is a Kenyan writer and political analyst based in
Nairobi, Kenya.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not
necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
--
Warren D. Smith
http://RangeVoting.org <-- add your endorsement (by clicking
"endorse" as 1st step)
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages