The National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) has criticised the choice of words used in writing the judgment delivered by Supreme Court judges in the presidential election petition.
The Commission says that in some instances, the language used by judges when delivering rulings was not conflict-sensitive.
Referring to the Supreme Court judgment in a petition challenging President William Ruto’s win in the August General Election, Commissioner Philip Okundi said the NCIC was unhappy with tone of the judgment.
“Even though we cannot term those terminologies that were used by the judges as hate speech, but the Commission got upset with the choice of words used in the ruling of the presidential poll petition and we have released a report explaining the same,” said Eng Okundi.
He spoke in Kakamega County at a forum reviewing the August 9, 2022 post-poll experience.
The Commission noted that despite Kenyans being tolerant and promoting peace during and after the August 9, 2022 General Election, the Supreme Court almost plunged the country into turmoil because of the language was used in writing the judgment in the presidential petition.
“In the build up to the General Election, we created peace awareness telling Kenyans to vote peacefully. They accepted our message and conducted the most peaceful election in our history. But the court almost messed the country in its final verdict,” said Eng Okundi.
In a report titled Elections Bila Noma 2022: The Kenyan Experience compiled by NCIC over the conduct of various players in the election exercise, the Commission regretted that some words that were used by the Supreme Court Judges almost caused trouble after a section of politicians got enraged with some of the terms uttered by the Supreme Court Judges when the Apex Court upheld William Ruto as the Fifth President following the August.
President Ruto of Kenya Kwanza won by garnering 7,176,141 votes (50.49 per cent), defeating Azimio candidate Raila Odinga who was making his fifth bid to become the president. Mr Odinga managed 6,942,930 votes (48.85 per cent)
Some of the terminologies NCIC takes issue with includes when Chief Justice Martha Koome described the case made by Azimio la Umoja One Kenya as ‘opaque’ and ‘hot air.’
The Commission met religious leaders, nedia, Civil Society Organisations and Youth and Women groups from Western region at the Golf Hotel to share post-poll experiences.
A report released by NCIC has exalted police officers for covering the election without reported cases of using excessive force or assaulting Kenyans.
Authorities should, however, enforce cyber bullying and privacy laws provided for in the Computer misuse and Cyber Crime Act, 2019, NCIC said.
Inflammatory statement
Eng Okundi said: “People have migrated from hurling inflammatory statements in political rallies to social media platforms where they use pseudo identities. The police need to shift their focus to reign in on those people.”
According to NCIC, 40 politicians were arrested over the use of hate speech in the last elections.
Mr Edwin Kilong, the Western region NCIC coordinator said some of the politicians paid fines, others are still pursuing their cases in court while others apologised and got pardoned.
The media was accused of taking sides before the general election, promoting biased reporting and confusing Kenyans when they relayed divergent poll results from the voting day.
“The Media Council of Kenya, being the regulator, should rein in journalists and media owners to honour objective reporting. Many of the media houses openly took sides and engaged in conflict-insensitive reporting. Worse still, some media houses publicly aligned to specicific political affiliations. Some media houses and venacular radio stations aired conflicting parallel tallying that caused division, confusion and anxiety among the citizenry,” read the report.
The NCIC report recommends balanced sharing of the national cake by the government so as to unite the country through inclusivity in the sharing of the cake citing concerns that regions in opposition zones feel excluded from the government of the day.
“Even though the public mood remained calm and hopeful, there are indications that the political environment remains bumpy as there are concerns that the situation is likely to trigger ethnic conflicts, especially over resource allocation, as witnessed in the past. Numerous Kenyans are still suffering from unequal distribution of natural resources,” read the report in part.
The report goes on to petition the government to accord Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) officials who are exposed to a lot of intimidation and threats more security.
This follows the death of two IEBC officials and the attacks on the electoral body’s chairman Wafula Chebukati at the Bomas of Kenya, shortly before he announced the presidential results.
The NCIC said decentralisation of its activities to the constituency level remained an important measure of sustaining peace and cohesion, meant to bring services closer to the people.
