PRESS RELEASE

Introduction: The recently concluded political party nomination exercise were marred by serious irregularities and electoral malpractices put a sharp spotlight on the quality of our entire multiparty democracy, the role of coalition politics as well as the survival of the institution of the political party. Despite the current chaotic situation; The Centre for Multiparty Democracy (CMD-Kenya) wishes to acknowledge and affirm the value of party primaries in nurturing and consolidating a democratic culture. Indeed, CMD-Kenya exists to do just that - consolidate multiparty democracy in the country by structuring and strengthening the institution of the political party and building cross-party relations.

As part of this process, CMD-Kenya also determined to address serious gender gaps that have characterized the country's national politics by deliberating working on a program to increase the participation of women in political parties and in elective politics. Specifically, CMD-Kenya in collaboration with the Heinrich Boll Foundation and the UNIFEM Gender and Governance Program (GGP) rolled out a special program to promote the participation of women. This was to specifically increase the number of elected women MPs women from the current 8% which is arguably the lowest representation in the region. The following are our preliminary observations and recommendations regarding the just concluded party nomination process.

Observations:

Pre-Election Coalitions: Political parties went to the primaries largely on the three coalition platforms - ODM, ODM-Kenya and PNU. We note with concern that these coalitions were hurriedly configured, had no stable memberships and could hardly marshal appropriate systems and mechanisms for managing the demands of this a massive nomination process. The results were there for all to see - violence, massive rigging and blatant vote buying among a host of other electoral malpractices that can only hamper democracy.

More importantly, the coalitions clearly undermined the independence of individual political parties and compromised their capacities to assert themselves as credible institutions. Worse still, political parties were unable to protect their own supporters, hence the intense, emotive and violent reactions from losers and winners, many of whom felt betrayed by the very political parties they had built, natured and supported.

Our position is that political parties need to guard their own integrity as institutions and cushion their membership against such unpredictable situations as the country is currently witnessing. This calls for a keen and honest re-examination of the timing of coalition politics with a view to adding greater value and credibility to the process. In this connection, CMD-Kenya notes the following:

Electoral Violence: The value of a peaceful election can never be overemphasized. The just concluded party nominations were marred by violence that resulted to fatalities, injuries and voter intimidation. Women, and people wit disabilities were particularly affected. This sad state has continued even after the nomination exercise as witnessed in political party headquarters. CMD-Kenya abhors and condemns violence in all its forms and urges all political parties to resolve disputes amicably and with dignity. No doubt, ECK and the security agents in this country must do a lot more and scale up their vigilance to curb electoral violence as it can only damage and undermine the democratic process.

Performance of Women : CMD-Kenya takes this opportunity to congratulate all those women who won party nominations on various tickets and urge them to carry on with the struggle. We appreciate that the battle was tough and grueling and acknowledge that it will not get better. We at CMD-Kenya, jointly with our partners will continue to do what we can to stand and support the women so that we can achieve our overall goal of increasing the number of women in the Tenth Parliament.

We are confident that this will be possible. We attach here, a list of women who have made it through the primaries one way or other and congratulate each one of them. With such a huge number of women destined to the ballot, we are confident that the10th Parliament will see the numbers increase from the current 18 to at the every lowest 30.

 We are however appalled that despite the firm pledges by various political parties and their coalitions would support women, none has showed any serious attempts to affirm women aspirants. We would have wished to see affirmative action at the party nomination exercises but did not.

Dispute Resolution: In closing, we appreciate that challenges facing political parties in resolving various disputes arising from the nomination exercise and urge that all candidates be allowed equal right to response.

More importantly, we urge the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) to consider extending the deadline for receiving final party lists of nominated candidates to allow political parties ample time for dispute resolution and reconciliation of their candidates.

Finally, we take this opportunity to thank the media for the intensive and professional role they maintained in reporting the nomination process throughout the country. Clearly, a professional and free media is quintessential to democracy. We urge the media to ensure similar fair and equal coverage of all candidates throughout the process. We thank you.

Issued by Njeri Kabeberi (Executive Director) on behalf of CMD-Kenya on this 20th day of November 2007.