The ghost of the disputed 2007 presidential election and its ensuing
violence was omnipresent during Kenya’s 2013 elections, and the
overarching message was peace at all costs. Some argue this posture
rendered other issues secondary
The 2013 election was pivotal in many respects. It was the first
election under the new constitution promulgated in August 2010. It was
the first election since the 2007 violence, for which two suspects,
Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, now president and deputy president
respectively, will soon face trial at the ICC for their alleged role.
It was also a transitional election — incumbent President Kibaki was not
running, having finished his two constitutional terms lasting a decade.
This, combined with the overwhelming domestic and international desire
to prevent any electoral violence, made the 2013 elections a hugely
important event in Africa’s electoral calendar.
TECHNO FALLACY AND MANAGING EXPECTATIONS
In his book, 'To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological
Solutionism' (2013), Evgeny Morozov writes, 'Recasting all complex
social situations either as neat problems with definite, computable
solutions or as transparent and self-evident processes that can be
easily optimized — if only the right algorithms are in place! — this
quest is likely to have unexpected consequences that could eventually
cause more damage than the problems they seek to address.'
In its desire to prevent voter fraud similar to 2007, when allegedly
over one million ghost voters voted, the new Independent Electoral and
Boundaries Commission (IEBC) switched from manual voting, voter
identification, and results transmission to an electronic system. Voters
were registered through Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) — a system
that captures voters’ details to prevent double registration.
The Kriegler commission, which was formed to investigate, among other
things, the organization and conduct of the 2007 electoral operations,
found that because of the level of irregularities involved it was
impossible to determine who won the 2007 presidential election. Further,
the commission said that 'high turnout in polling stations in areas
dominated by one party is extremely suspicious and in the eyes of
Independent Review Commission (IREC) is in itself a clear indication of
likely fraud, most probably conducted through ballot stuffing, utilising
local knowledge of who on the poorly kept voter register is absent,
deceased or for another reason unlikely to appear to vote.'
This was argued forcefully to be the rationale for deploying BVR: it was
thought to provide a foolproof register of voters. It automatically
subtracts from the main national register voters who have voted and thus
provides a running tally of total votes cast, and centrally integrates
the register so that multiple voting becomes physically impossible.
Unlike manual voting, the Electronic Vote Transmission (EVT) was meant
to relay the results quickly and efficiently to avoid a long waiting
time between voting and release of the results. The longer the waiting
period, the more tension builds. When unveiling the system the IEBC
said, 'A mobile device will be used by each presiding officer to enter
the data from those forms into a specially developed mobile phone
application. This device will securely transmit these provisional
results data over mobile data network to IEBC headquarters for
consolidation and publication.'
This singular trust in technology without considering potential
underlying structural deficiencies on which these technologies run made
technology an end rather than the means. Technology is nothing but
software; it needs hardware — infrastructure — on which it can run. For
instance, Kenya’s electricity coverage is around 20 per cent, and the
BVR kit’s battery needs to be charged. And Internet coverage outside
major towns is not very reliable.
Fundamentally, the people are at the core of all technology, and if they
are ill-prepared, as in this case, no amount of technological
advancement can help.
Predictably, the systems failed in most polling stations on voting day.
While some of the initial problems like the systems password failure
were rectified, Electronic Vote Transmission from the polling stations
to the main counting centre in Nairobi collapsed more than once, forcing
the commission to resort to manual vote tallying.
One distinct feature of the switch to manual was the number of the
rejected votes bizarrely dropped from over 300,000 to under 100,000. The
electoral commission’s chair Isaak Hassan attributed the discrepancy to
the fact that the electrical system was processing the rejected voters
to a power of 8 (the machine multiplied every rejected vote by 8). If
that is the case, mathematically the final figure of rejected votes
after manual counting should be divisible by 8 as well.
The commission’s hype that the technology would make all problems in the
previous elections disappear made the public uncritical. In the end the
commission was long on promise, and short on delivery.
THE COST OF DEMOCRACY
The monetary cost of elections in Kenya has always been steep, but the
transition from manual to electronic election management made the cost
even steeper. For instance, the BVR kit alone cost 8 billion Kenya
shillings (approximately USD $93,567,200). IEBC has a budget of $226
million or $16 per voter, much of which is externally funded. Despite
the huge amount of money spent, the commission failed to pull off a
credible election compared to other African countries, such as Uganda in
which the cost per voter was $4, and Ghana where the figure is even
less at $0.70. This underlines the fact that neither money nor
technology in and of themselves can deliver a legitimate election;
rather, what is needed is trust in government institutions. If the
institutions are seen to be operating above the board, people can live
with some of their indiscretions. This is because not all social
problems are computable and thus their solution is a linear application
of a computer code or logarithm.
INSTITUTION TRUST DEFICIT
One of the distinct lessons of the 2007-2008 violence was that Kenyans,
including their leaders, retained scant trust in the state’s
institutions. This particularly undermined the resolution of the
election dispute through the court.
In 2007, during the disputed elections, Martha Karua, who was then a
stalwart of Kibaki’s administration and the Minister for Justice and
Constitutional Affairs, told Odinga cynically that if he felt the
elections were not free and fair, he should go to court. Knowing full
well the courts were not reformed enough — they were still beholden to
the executive, their appointing authority — to make any ruling that
would go against the incumbent, Odinga replied that he would not be
subjected to a kangaroo court.
This all but eviscerated any residual desire by the leadership, and by
extension their supporters, to seek the court as an avenue for
arbitration of the conflict.
But the judiciary was not the only institution that sorely lacked the
people’s trust. The police were equally distrusted, if not more. The
police have been the face of an entrenched culture of impunity in Kenya.
The force has been accused of excessive use of force against citizens
and of being eternally corrupt, eroding the law and the human rights
culture.
For nearly half a century since Kenya obtained its independence from
the British, state institutions have barely been reformed. Rather, they
have remained extractive, personalised, and politicised, as opposed to
professional, public service-oriented, and independent.
Most institutions were left at the beck and call of the executive, who
used them to settle political scores with opponents both real and
imagined. The treasury and the security sector are two institutions that
have remained captive to the forces of the status quo, who view them as
leverage to stay in power. As such, they have fiercely resisted any
attempts at reform.
The hope that the electoral institutions would counterbalance these
state institutions has not materialised, despite the introduction of
multiparty politics in the 1990s. The electoral institutions have,
except in rare cases, been largely beholden to the executive, which
denies them their independence either through appointment or limited
funding.
However, since the new constitution was enacted, both the police and the
judiciary have been undergoing reform. While the pace and depth of
reform in the judiciary has gone well, the police reform has remained
symbolic, and to date substantive reform has not taken place. So far the
appointment of the Inspector General of the Police (IGP) has been the
most significant reform. Since it is the police that investigate, and
the judiciary that arbitrates, if the quality of investigation is not
above reproach the court’s rulings will be impacted.
It is a measure of how far judicial reform has come that the parties
aggrieved as a result of the 2013 elections have filed an election
petition in court rather than resorting to street demonstrations.
HOPE AND FEAR IN AN ELECTORAL SYSTEM
The electorate invest a great deal of fear and hope in elections. Hope
that if a politician from 'their community' ascends to power, their lot
will improve; fear that if they lose, their fortune will decline. This
mindset has effectively reduced the election into a zero-sum game that
politicians cynically exploit. By turning their individual loss into the
community’s loss, politicians have conveniently avoided tackling hard
questions through innovative policy interventions; they instead peddle
hollow fears and non-existent hope. This mutually destructive loop
creates antagonistic ethnic cleavages, leaving the country hugely
polarised from one election cycle to another.
This also makes elections hugely expensive, both materially and
symbolically. Consequently, both the electorate and the politicians
scarcely accept the outcome of elections. The sooner elections are made
less expensive through passing the Campaign Finance Bill, the better.
In electoral management and democratic governance, robust institutions
are the first vanguard against fraud; technology should not substitute
them, but instead complement them.
* Abdullahi Boru is a Horn of Africa analyst who has authored several reports on Kenya for different organisations.
