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{
"id": 1411440,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1411440/?format=api",
"text_counter": 188,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Uasin Gishu County, UDA",
"speaker_title": "Hon. Gladys Boss",
"speaker": null,
"content": "It was because of experiences. That is why we changed our laws to say that the results announced at the polling stations would be the final result. Also, other systems were later introduced, like having a maximum of 700 voters at a polling station. One of the ways of corrupting the electoral system used to be manipulation of the numbers at polling stations where you could have 10,000 people at a polling station. Of course, they would not all vote, which means you actually disenfranchise people. Because of that, again, I was part of the team that learnt that lesson and determined that the number of people who should vote at a polling station should be a maximum of 700. That decision was arrived at scientifically. It takes five minutes for each person to vote. In a day, you have 720 minutes. Therefore, you can only have 144 people voting between Six O'clock in the morning and Five O'clock in the evening. If you put six polling booths, six clerks and six processing clerks, what happens is that you will have six people voting at the same time. Therefore, you come to the figure of 700. So, it is a science. We only learnt that and improved our law from experience. Therefore, I encourage that we constantly keep looking at our laws. Hon. Temporary Speaker, I will now look at three other items. Having given the historical background and evolution of our electoral system, I will now look at three aspects. One, I do not agree with the proposal that a CEO should serve for a term of three years. It is too short. One only becomes an election expert by the number of times they conduct elections. It is like telling me that somebody becomes an expert surgeon by operating patients for only three years. If we want to build a cadre of electoral experts, they have to serve for a long time. Yes, I agree that the Commission must have a limited time but for the technical staff, at least for a CEO, they should serve three election cycles to make sense. In fact, I belong to the electoral network called Bridge, where you constantly go and observe elections, attend trainings and exchange notes where people teach others what happened in their own countries and so on. So, if you have a CEO for three years, my God! I do not know how he is going to run the elections. That is a very bad amendment. The danger is more in a commissioner staying longer and not a CEO, who is a technical staff. Today if you go to the Electoral Commission, the constituency election coordinators have probably done three election cycles because the first group was hired when I was there in 2010. You find that they get better with time. All we do is just keep changing them so that they are not serving in the same station. If you look at the directors that are there, they have become better and better with time. Even now, we must ask ourselves, if we hire commissioners today, will those commissioners be experts enough to run the elections in 2027? The people who manage the elections are the technical staff. They are the ones who understand voter education, voter registration, management of the register and the IT systems. So, you cannot have a turnover of CEOs. I welcome the change that has been made to define who the chairperson is. This is in tandem with Article 250. It also aligns with the Katiba Institute case, which clearly said no other person can be chairperson. On the issue of enlargement of the selection panel, it makes sense and I support that amendment. Lastly, the removal of delimitation of boundaries from the Schedule to the substantive Act is a welcome move because it does not make sense to have it as a Schedule. Most importantly, the census follows the delimitation of boundaries because there is no other basis for delimitation of boundaries except via census. I agree with the rest of the amendments except for the term of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Thank you, Hon. Temporary Speaker."
}