Dear Kenyans:

First of all I would say the August 2017 presidential election was better than previous ones especially the 2013 election where lot of lives were lost and lot of people misplaced. In 2013, there was less coordination and organization in terms of security, fewer officials were provided which were subdued by protesters leading to a great level of violence but it doesn’t make the August 2017 Election process acceptable. The current election could be better in terms of crowd control and done rightly in terms of transparency.

We saw a kind of election in 2017 where voting irregularities were sighted and hundreds of voters were concerned about their names not being on the register. This needs to be questioned as a situation where basic human rights of individual citizens are denied? Either be it the minority or majority. If corruption must be fought let’s start doing things the right way rather than accepting what seems better/ fair ….We all have a right to choose our leaders, if we say we are practising democracy. Moreover if we want the right leaders, the right procedures must be followed, in order for corruption to be fought we should start from the very beginning, If the leaders elected got in through corrupt medium, don’t we think corruption will persist?
Secondly, following the death of a senior election official Christopher Msando who was in charge of the voting technology a week before the election calls for a serious investigation. If the authorities and institutions in Kenya are to be trusted, they should investigate. Although Ralia Odinga’s hacking accusations could sound personal to the public since he is an opposition party these investigations are also necessary, if there are doubts. There is a need for transparency as this would send the right message to the general public by letting them know that their votes count.
Later investigations by the Supreme Court found that the International Electoral and Boundaries Commission had failed to conduct elections in accordance with the law and that irregularities impacted the outcome of the poll. So with this I would conclude that the election process should be questioned and proper investigations should be done to send the right message to the public, most especially the upcoming generations that transparency can be attained in government and even though corruption is evident in our present society, we shouldn’t settle with the norm rather challenge and seek to change it through the right medium.