Parliament was the weakest link in the electoral process by frustrating the passage of legislation critical to the management of elections in the country, the electoral commission has said.
This came as development partners praised the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) for conducting free, fair and credible elections in August.
The IEBC yesterday noted that the National Assembly and the Senate “sat on at least five election laws and attendant regulations” that were to guide the 2022 elections.
Speaking during a stakeholders’ dialogue forum on the August 9 post-election evaluation in Nairobi yesterday, IEBC Commissioner Abdi Guliye said the agency “extracted issues” that required legal attention and forwarded them to the two speakers of Parliament.
He, however, said the raft of regulations submitted in 2020 were still “gathering dust” in Parliament.
The pieces of legislation include the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2022, which was passed by the National Assembly but is pending before Senate.
The IEBC (Amendment) Bill, 2021, which intends to amend the IEBC Act to provide a statutory and regulatory framework for the delimitation of constituencies and wards is also pending in Parliament.
The MPs are also yet to pass the Referendum Bill, 2021, which seeks to provide for a standalone Act of Parliament to guide the conduct of a referendum.
There is also the Election Campaign Finance (Amendment) Bill which sought to amend the Election Campaign Finance Act, 2013 to make it easy and effective for the IEBC to regulate the amount of money that may be spent by political parties and candidates in elections.
In addition, there are six sets of regulations including the reviewed Elections (General) Regulations, Reviewed Elections (Voter Registration) Regulations, Reviewed Elections (Voter education) Regulations, Reviewed Elections (Technology) Regulations, Elections (Party primaries and Party list) Regulations and Election Campaign Finance Regulations.
Prof Guliye said the commission is currently conducting the evaluation of the 2022 elections with the report set to be released early next year.
“We will need the support of different stakeholders to pressure Parliament not to wait until 2026 to look into the proposed reviews,” he said.
IEBC Director of Legal Services Chrispine Owiye said the legislative proposals were intended to firm up the conduct of the August 9 elections.
“The National Assembly was reluctant to adopt the reviewed regulations and so there is a need to have them relooked at for adoption,” said Mr Owiye.
European Union Donor Group on Elections co-chair Guy Harrison said the IEBC conducted transparent and credible elections due to deployment of technology in the entire process.
“The peaceful election is a historic achievement but do not rest on your laurels but build on what was achieved while also addressing governance issues that were raised by the Supreme Court to have IEBC that has the full trust of all Kenyans,” said Mr Harrison.
Mr Thomas Hansen from the Danish embassy, however, urged the commission to ensure women have better access to the electoral process by guaranteeing an equal playing field for everyone .
