THE VOTERS AND ECK..."STUPID"!

Quoting my own article to this website two months ago about political polls /"In politics when you are behind you ignore the polls and when you are ahead you embrace them"/. ODM has been ahead in most of the polls in the past months. PNU and its supporters have been condemning the polls since they were behind. Now that the polls are showing the race as a dead heat between Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga, it is ODM supporters who are now condemning the polls. Whether your party or candidates are ahead or behind in the polls, the election is /not/ being held today. I urge you to ignore the polls if you want to be an asset to your party and candidate in this election. The role voters and ECK play will determine the outcome of this election, not the polls. To put it another way, regardless of what the polls say, the actual votes are still in the hands of the voters and ECK. Political parties and their candidates can make promises to voters or to influence pollsters but at the end it up to the voters and the ECK to cast their ballots and hire these candidates to the public payroll for the next five years.

For people new to multi-party politics and freedom of the press, you must understand that pollsters and newspapers need to do their jobs; after all they too are in business to make a living. But if voters do their part by voting without allowing polls and newspaper to influence their decision, they will have the last laugh in this election. Political operatives and supporters need to spend energy and resources on voting drives in their regions and districts for the candidates and parties of their choice. People in rural areas, small towns and villages are not going to pay attention to the polls. On Dec. 27^th , election day, the voters in these remote areas of the country will definitely need help to get to the polling stations to cast votes. The best help political operatives can do to help their candidate and party is to educate the voters on why they should support your candidates and how to actually vote. In a young, multi-party democracy like Kenya, voting must be treated as a right not a privilege. For this reason, voter participation in this election is more than supporting the candidate who buys more "changa" to the voters, makes bigger political promises or is "one of your own". It is about developing a system that can produce a stable, civil government in the long run.

You can embrace or condemn the polls until you turn blue in the face but this will not help your candidate and the party. As we speak, the factors that candidates, political operatives and voters must consider ahead of the election include knowing the polling stations in their district, the logistics of how voters will get to these polling stations, the formation of vote watchers, the security of the votes, the actual vote counting (at the polling station or elsewhere) and most of all conducting a free and fair election without physical abuse and other sorts of voter intimidation. Between now and election day, the aforementioned factors will either win or lose the election for parties and candidates everywhere. Political candidates and voters who cannot plan for the aforementioned factors are doomed to fail, regardless of what the polls are predicting now. It is true that the tribal loyalty, party loyalty and political nepotism often practiced in Kenya complicates the voting process, however, this still should not discourage voters from participating in the election. The chaos and irregularities in recent party primary elections should be the exception, not the rule in the coming general election. Unfortunately in some of these primary contests losers were declared winners and winners were declared losers, but these are the pains of the maturation of a multi-party political system.

General elections must be transparent for the candidates and the voters to truly exercise their rights to participate in the election. In short, candidates, political operatives and voters must still do their part by actually getting to the polling stations and vote despite what the polls says today or tomorrow. The needs of voters in less developed regions and rural areas that lack good roads and communication in their districts should be addressed before the election. For example, how will the voting supplies and personnel supervisors get to these places if it rains on the day of election? Political candidates and their operatives should not wait to complain about these potential problems after the election has been lost. Other factors like election violence and the government should also address vote buying, unless Kenya wants to be seen as a banana republic where electoral laws do not mean anything and democracy is achieved through corruption and violence.

Assuming the candidates and voters do what is required of them in this article, will ECK be impartial and independent in these elections? Will ECK get voting papers to polling stations on time? Will districts get the right polling papers with the correct candidates listed? What times will the polls opens and close? How will the votes be counted? Where will the votes be counted and who will actually count the votes? How will the votes be transported? Will the voting procedures and protocol be uniform throughout all districts? Will the quality of voting papers be the same throughout the country to avoid spoiled ballot counts? Some of these issues may be too small to casual observers of politics, yet at the end they may determine the outcome of this election. The candidates, political operatives and voters should ask these questions and get answers from ECK before the actual voting takes place.

Political candidates and voters should pay attention to the potential power ECK has in this election. The ECK body has the potential to sway this election in either direction. For political operatives, this is the time to glean any public information from ECK that can help prepare the voters for general elections. It is not good enough just to get voters to the polling stations. The voters must also know the procedure and rules for voting, as required by ECK. Political candidates and their operatives may want to host seminars to teach voters how to actually fill out their ballot to avoid confusion in the voting booths. The voters must have the chance to vote and the ECK must be impartial and independent without favoring either party candidates. The neutrality of ECK is a must in the general election to avoid repeating the pitfalls of past primary elections on a larger scale.

Dan Magero Orao
Michigan, USA

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