Was the nominations process credible?

I am persuaded that the violence witnessed across the country over the last few days after the botched party nominations could have been avoided had all the parties been sincere about running the process cleanly and transparently.

This business of having the nominations at the end of the designated period was certainly not in good faith as can be seen when compared with the parties that held their nominations earlier and had an almost flawless experience. It would appear that the process all along was more in keeping with the requirements of individual political parties and the IEBC rules for all parties to conduct a nominations process then to ensure that the will of the people in choosing their preferred candidates prevailed. It was a mere formality. The extra period extended by the IEBC both in terms of the nomination period and the extended deadline for parties to finalise their list of nominees did not help matters and added fuel to an already volatile situation.

The resultant controversies surrounding who won or lost, allegations of electoral malpractices, elections not taking place in some areas, burning of ballot papers, suspect announcements by returning officers who were then incommunicado, winners being denied nomination certificates, people declaring themselves winners  etc all had overtures of the botched 2007 elections and the violence and mayhem that followed.

The post elections crisis of 2008 was precipitated along similar lines with delays in the counting of ballots, delays in making announcements, suspect announcements by returning officers who then went missing, people declaring themselves winners etc. The longer the process took from voting to counting the greater the probability that some mischief was afoot and I can now safely say that this has happened during these recently concluded party nominations with all the major political parties guilty of manipulation and handing nomination certificates to their preferred candidates at the expense of genuine ‘winners’.

The IEBC while not directly involved in the nominations process in my view has not come out clean and as an independent body since they were responsible for ensuring that the timelines were followed scrupulously and that the deadlines for submission of names was done as per the timelines that all political parties were aware of. This business of extending the deadlines by the IEBC as the process continued seems to suggest some subtle manipulation behind the scenes by powerful people with vested interests who wanted a certain outcome in certain areas that only an extension of time would guarantee!!

This has been a shameful process and clearly democracy has been tossed out of the window together with the aspirations of the electorate who participated in the process and whose wishes have been blatantly ignored by the parties to suit certain interests.

I foresee a political blood bath come 4^th March 2013 after voters reject those that have been imposed on them and they strongly protest that they have been rigged out. The IEBC certainly has a lot of work ahead of it in delivering a credible and flawless election process in March 2013 and all of us will be watching keenly to see if they have learnt any lessons from the recently concluded shambolic nominations process.