Observations from a peaceful referendum
Els Rijke: Checking modern technologies at Kibera's polling station. Yesterday, the fourth of August, was an historical day for Kenya. Kenyans voted in a referendum for a new constitution and the majority voted “yes”.
Hivos supports an ICT based election monitoring programme (‘election Watch’) in East Africa which is coordinated by CRECO for the Kenya referendum. Ushahidi, one of the partners in the programme, introduced the uchaguzi website. The website uses information coming from hundreds of citizens through sms and internet. This Kenyan platform is probably the first initiative of this kind in the world, and it is piloted around the referendum.
Will Janssen and Els Rijke from the Nairobi office were part of the international observers’ team that supports observations made by local observers. We each went with a small group of East African observers to several polling stations in and around Nairobi. It was great experience for us. Because of Kenya’ violent history during elections (especially the 2007 presidential elections), we were warned to stay inside and especially not go to any of the so called “hot spots”. Going around with an observer batch and blue shirt, nevertheless brought us to several “problem areas” and slums. The atmosphere in and around the polling stations was generally calm and peaceful. At some places there were long queues but people were waiting quietly. Small shops and markets were just open, compared to last elections when every shop closed down in fear of problems.
Kibera is Kenya’s best known slum which might have triggered many media and observers as well as VIP’s to go there. We were surprised to find out that Kibera’s Olympic polling station was the best organized, people were working in a very efficient way and used laptops for voters’ identification. Our own observations that voting was done in a credible and fair way, with minor irregularities, was confirmed by other observers.
Uchaguzi posted irregularities, such as voter’s names missing from the register, directly on their website and when needed urged the IIEC to take action. Yesterday afternoon we observed Uchaguzi’s people checking all incoming messages and putting reports on the site. The room was full of laptops and people making phone calls.
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