Civil Society Organizations calls for urgent reconstitution of IEBC
NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 16...The Civil society Organizations under Uchaguzi platform in a joint press conference have called on urgent Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) reconstitution as the world mark International day for democracy.
They said that the delay in recruiting IEBC commissioners has continue to undermine the constitutional functions of the commission and fundamentally impacts not just democracy but citizens in the constituencies and wards that do not have representatives.
"Uchaguzi urges that every Kenyan has the right to representation and therefore the continued uncertainty on when to conduct the above by-elections may lead to the disenfranchisement of the respective residents of these electoral areas".they said in a statement.
Uchaguzi platform brings together, six civil society organisations which include Elections Observations Group, Centre for Multiparty Democracy Kenya, Transparency International Kenya, Mzalendo, Electoral Law and Governance Institute for Africa and Constitution and Reform Education Consortium.
They noted Pending by-elections with concern that a number of electoral units have remained unrepresented for a period now because of the absence of members of county assembly ward and national assembly.
"We therefore call on the IEBC to give clear directions to the process where it is established that the secretariat and its field returning officers can indeed conduct these by-elections, then the preparation process should start without any further delay".
In addition conversation on the state of delimitation of electoral boundaries should be convened between citizens and duty bearers so that citizens' opinion and suggestions can be obtained to inform the next steps.
Subsequently they raised concern on applications for new ID cards that have piled up to more than 600,000 over the last few months with the number going up by 10,000 every day with over 5,000 Kenyans making application for replacement of lost or defaced IDs.
The intended Maisha ID cards have a ten-year validity period, a major shift from the previous generation of ID cards in Kenya which had no expiry date.
Uchaguzi further called on urgent address of litigations relating to issuance of ID cards so that citizens can continue to access government services and also exercise their democratic right to vote.
"There is need to synchronizes civil registry so that once you have an ID, one should automatically be a voter need for sufficient budget to allow IEBC to undertake continuous voter registration and education". Said Uchaguzi platform.
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