Raila wants political parties to have representatives in electoral commission

simplemind · 2014-10-22T17:34:21+00:00

Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) leader Raila Odinga says the coalition will push for comprehensive electoral reforms. In a statement released a day after he returned from a three week's mission out of the country, Raila said nations that have embraced multiparty democracy have taken the election process seriously adding that Kenya should not be an exception. Here is a verbatim excerpts from Raila's statement on electoral reforms. "In CORD, we believe that as a country, we have a historic opportunity to embrace the challenge and brace the trail to push vigorously for reforms in the conduct of elections as the next frontier in the continuing journey of democratization on the continent. That is why we will continue to push vigorously for greater role for political parties in the conduct of general elections. There is clearly a need for parties to appoint representatives to the IEBC with a mandate to be the party's watchdog within the agreed rules governing elections. We will also seek to have it in our constitution that results announced by presiding officers at the polling station are final and IEBC's role will be to provide the national tally. There is no rationale whatsoever for IEBC officials sitting in Nairobi, to purport to be verifying figures sent to them by its agents at the polling stations. That system has only succeeded in creating more confusion and room to manipulate the will of the voters. We want to instill accountability and clarity by making it constitutional that voter registration, voter identification and transmissions of election results will be through a pure electronic mode, not a mixture of electronic and manual. We will also seek to amend the constitution to ensure that the IEBC has ONLY ONE national voter register which shall be published at least 30 days to the general elections. We will seek a constitutional provision that the IEBC shall provide any person, at the person's request, the data or document used in elections within 24 hours of such a request in either electronic or hard copy or both. We are also keen to amend the Constitution to include mechanisms for ensuring that all regions have equal opportunity to access voter registration and voting stations. These measures will ensure fairness, transparency, effectiveness, accountability and accuracy in the electoral process. Provision of data within 24 hours will ensure that a person who wishes to challenge an election outcome has all requisite evidence. Tied to the holding of free and fair elections is the need to enforce and respect term limits.

Thread starter simplemind
Start date Oct 22, 2014

simplemind

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Raila wants political parties to have representatives in electoral commission

simplemind

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