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{
"id": 1480930,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1480930/?format=api",
"text_counter": 163,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Oketch Gicheru",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": null,
"content": "Fast forward, in 2013, we had a presidential election that was also contested. Even appearing in court, commissioners always go scot-free. Therefore, we must support this Bill. The Bill has attempted to look at those offences by members and staffers of the commission. I like the way they are specific. For instance, if you look at the issue of documentation of elections under Clause 6(a), it states that- “A member of the Commission, staff or other person having any duty to perform pursuant to any written law relating to any election who makes, in any record, return or other document which they are required to keep or make under such written law, an entry which they know or have reasonable cause to believe to be false, or do not believe to be true.” This is one of the most radically looked at documentation. We know that elections forms, starting with Form A, to Form B, to Form C, that are used to declare elections at presidential level and the other ones used at constituency levels are highly regarded and they have very clear security features. We have seen several instances where those documents are doctored. Electoral officials have so much power that doctoring sometimes escapes the mind of the nation because of the bulkiness of our elections. You can imagine that at a presidential level, we deal with over 46,000 polling stations. Sometimes if these things are not well documented, then we may have a problem. I do not want to belabour all the sections and offences that have been listed here, but I want to make three quick comments. I will submit several amendments to this Bill. It is one thing to look at offences committed during the running of an election, but it is another thing to look at offences through the entire process of an election. If you can remember the 2017 presidential election that was nullified by the court, it was based on electoral process. In my humble view, this Bill seeks to sort three issues but also leaves three things that I want to talk about. This Bill seeks to solve unreasonable delays and doctoring of election results. That is well captured in Clause 6. If you read from (a) to (m), it is well captured. Secondly, it also seeks to sort the issue of alteration of results, if I were to summarize what I am seeing from this Bill, which is why I am supporting it. Thirdly, it can essentially help us to correct ungazetted polling stations, which sometimes are also featured in a number of our election results. You end up having some ghost polling stations like what happened in Migori County in 2017 General Elections. Madam Temporary Speaker, if you followed that nullification, there were, variably so, a number of polling stations that came to the Supreme Court as un-gazetted, and non-existing that were used to vary that election. The fact that this Bill can solve those three issues, is a big step for the country. However, this Bill must also explore the entirety of an election process, which does not start on the voting day. Election starts becoming a fraud when we start to conduct voter registration. We have seen a number of disenfranchised voters. Even now, there are young people in this country, who would wish to be registered voters, but cannot because the registration process and the issuance of Identification (ID) cards have been separated. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Director, Hansard and AudioServices, Senate."
}