How Expensive Are Elections in Kenya?

Elections in Kenya have been reported to be very expensive. The two leading political parties have lined up deep pockets in preparation for the August 8 elections.

The politicians and their political parties are planning to invest a fortune of Information Technology (IT), hiring of foreign advisers, helicopters and high-end motor-vehicles.

The official campaigns have been planned to officially commence on 28th May, 2017.Experts have estimated that a presidential candidate requires Ksh. 5 billion or USD$50 million to conduct an extensive campaign. This money will be used in purchasing of campaign materials, event organizing, communications, human resources, operations, transport and research.

Currently, it costs $2,500 an hour to hire a helicopter for the campaign. This is a damn expensive affair. Those aspiring for governorship will require Ksh. 600 million to mount an election campaign.

An aspiring member of parliament will need Ksh. 15 million to run a campaign to join national assembly. This cost may vary depending on a number of factors such as population and size of the constituency under question.

NASA vs Jubilee Party

These two party have put in place resource mobilization team to raise the required funds for campaigns.

The National Super Alliance (NASA) resource mobilization team will be led by Jimmy Wanjigi. In Jubilee Party, leading Mount Kenya billionaires will led the resource mobilization campaign.

Other options

There are several options through which the political aspirants and political parties can raises the required resources. For instance, the former president Mwai Kibaki raised resources in 2012 through his 1-million per plate fund-raising dinner.

National Exchequer Funding

The national treasury will fund the campaigns of political parties as required by the Political Parties Act. The resources will lonely be received by political parties which were able to amass at least 3 percent of all votes cast during the previous general elections.

Previously, TNA received a total of $866,679 from the exchequer. This was followed closely by $848,239 received by Orange Democratic Movement (ODM). Finally, the defunct United Republic Party (URP) received $273,688.

Political parties need these funds in order to properly campaign.

The Jubilee Party is receiving technical expertise from SCL Elections from United Kingdom. This organization is providing advice on fundraising, research and budgeting and campaign strategy.

Rwanda censors social media ahead of elections

Ahead of national elections, Rwanda’s National Election Commission (NEC) has ruled that presidential candidates’ social media updates need to be pre-approved by the organisation before the candidates can post them online.

Candidates will have to submit their social media messages to seven election commissioners at least 48 hours before their publication. Social media posts include text, photographs and videos that candidates wish to publish on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram or on websites.

According to the electoral commission, this measure is aimed at preventing “declarations, words, acts that can lead the population to acts of insecurity that could divide the Rwandan population.”

The measure to regulate social media will take effect on 14 July ahead of the presidential elections set to take place on August 4. The opposition has criticised the move saying it will be used to block any criticism of President Paul Kagame who has been in charge of the country since 1994 and is running for a third term after changing the constitution to allow him to run again.

The Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority (RURA), a statutory regulator of media has also criticised the move.

IT NEWS

Media’s role is crucial to free and fair elections in any democracy

The news media is usually one of first casualties of bungled or contested elections. From the recent US elections, the UK’s Brexit vote to Zambia’s controversial 2016 presidential elections, the mainstream news media bore the brunt of much of the criticism that followed.

 In Africa, biased media coverage, most often in favour of incumbent presidents, is one of the reasons voters have little faith in the legitimacy of election outcomes. In South Africa for example, the public broadcaster routinely comes under intense criticism at election time for being a propaganda outlet for the ruling African National Congress.

Kenya’s state broadcaster has often shed its public mandate to become the governing party’s mouthpiece during general elections. In countries such as Uganda, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Swaziland and Zambia, public broadcasters openly canvas for incumbent governments during elections.

Media as independent arbiter

Over the last few years, the nature of political campaigns in Africa has changed significantly. Politicians and political parties are now actively shaping their public profiles. They are engaging powerful PR agencies and even starting their own media organisations to market themselves.

In Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta’s governing Jubilee Party has engaged the services of British PR firm BTP Advisors, as well as the data mining company Cambridge Analytica (CA). CA played a key role in Donald Trump’s win in the US presidential elections, and in the UK’s Brexit vote through aggressive data driven campaigning.

This changing political landscape has complicated the media’s role in the coverage of elections. But there’s still an expectation that the mainstream news media should play the role of impartial arbiter. They are expected to provide an open platform for broader public deliberation particularly at election time.

It’s this expectation that informs criticism when the media fails to fulfil this important mandate. Indeed, while digital technologies such as social media have now been widely adopted in Africa, millions remain unconnected to the Internet. This means that that these new platforms are inaccessible to the masses.

Traditional media - particularly radio - therefore remain an important platform for public engagement. At election time, these kinds of legacy media formats are critical in enabling the public to make informed choices. Elections in Africa are fiercely fought because the state is seen as a resource. 

Winning elections makes accessing the state possible, usually to the exclusion of those who lose. Because the stakes are so high, when people lose faith in the credibility of an election some resort to violence. This was the case in Kenya following the disputed 2007-2008 elections. This led to post-election violence. Over 1000 people lost their lives, 600,000 were displaced and property worth millions of Kenyan shillings was destroyed.

The peace narrative

This August, Kenya goes to the polls again in what’s expected to be another bruising political context. For the country’s news media, the coverage of these elections will be extremely challenging.

The last elections held in 2013 were largely peaceful even if the outcome of the presidential tally was disputed. The peaceful elections, which were fought with as much passion as the disputed 2007 poll, didn’t happen that way by accident. The Kenyan media adopted a new approach in 2013 after having been accused of contributing to the violence that engulfed the country in the aftermath of the 2007 elections.

“Peace” journalism was uniformly adopted by all mainstream media. Controversial stories were not covered. Meanwhile, reference to politicians’ ethnic identities was avoided in media coverage. Ethnicity remains an important characteristic of political competition in Kenya hence the sensitivity to ethnic markers of identity.

But “peace” journalism remains controversial and the Kenyan media was widely criticised for adopting it. Many argue that focusing on peace at the expense of the credibility of the elections, ignoring for example numerous electoral anomalies, was a case of self-censorship. Indeed, renowned writers such as Michaela Wrong likened the Kenyan media to “a zombie army”. She argued that it had “taken up position where Kenya’s feisty media used to be, with local reporters going glaze-eyed through the motions”.

Changing media landscape

Local journalists didn’t agree. They argued that erring on the side of caution was a sacrifice worth making in light of the 2007-2008 post-election violence, when the news media was accused of irresponsible coverage which contributed to it. As the news media decides which approach to adopt in the coverage of the next general election, it must recognise that its role has changed considerably in Africa and around the world. While mainstream media remains an important space for public debate, it can no longer be regarded as an impartial arbiter due to three key changes.

First, the African media has become an active participant in the political process because quite a few outlets are now owned by politicians. In Kenya for example, the current president owns Media Max, a company with diverse media interests including TV, radio and newspapers. Media outlets that are owned by politicians have been known to take sides either covertly or overtly.

While this tradition is part of the political culture in the United States and Europe, such partisanship is still only grudgingly accepted in Africa. Second, elections have become an important source of revenue for the media with wealthy candidates and political parties spending large amounts of money in political advertising. As such, coverage is skewed in favour of those who can afford the high cost of advertising.

In Kenya for example, a staggering 8 billion shillings ($77 million) was spent on radio campaigns alone during the 2013 election cycle. Finally, the number of news content providers has grown exponentially. Mainstream media now has to fight for audiences like never before. This has forced it to ignore some of the most fundamental features of journalism like the verification of stories and strong gate-keeping processes. As political campaigns evolve in Africa, so must media coverage of elections. However, it remains incumbent upon the press to act responsibly and in the interest of democracy.

The writer is Senior Lecturer in Journalism, University of Central Lancashire. The article was originally published on The Conversation.

Diane Shima Rwigara Joins Rwanda’s Presidential Race

“I will be tackling poverty, I will be tackling injustice, I will be tackling insecurity. In the last 23 years RPF has been in power, they have not been able, not only to eradicate poverty but even to give Rwandans the minimum. Most Rwandans are dying of hunger, they have nowhere to live,” said 35-year old Diane Shima Rwigara who has declared her interest to run for Rwanda’s highest office.

She will run as an independent candidate in the election scheduled for later this year.

President Paul Kagame, who was elected in 2010, is expected to run for a third term

According to AFP, the National Electoral Commission will receive nominations from candidates from June 12 to 23. A provisional list of qualified candidates will be announced on June 27.

The third candidate is Frank Habineza of Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, the only registered opposition party to Kagame’s government.

In February 2017 Phillipe Mpayimana, a former journalist and author, announced that he’ll be joining the race.

In a 2015 referendum, Rwandans approved a constitutional amendment that effectively enables Kagame to stay in power until 2034.

The accountant and businesswoman, in her announcement on Wednesday, criticised the referendum.

“When time comes for leaders to leave power, they get excuses to stay and then say that it is the people who are asking them to continue to lead. This is a bad habit across the continent,” she said.

Rwigara is a Tutsi who was born in Kigali in 1981. Her father, Assinapol Rwigara, an industrialist who was a key financial backer of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, was killed in a car accident in 2015, which his family believes was a politically motivated murder.

Rwigara is a trained accountant and a women's rights activist who has repeatedly spoken out against the country's bad governance under President Paul Kagame and about injustice and oppression.

‘Credibility of Election Will Be Determined By Implementation of Code of Conduct’

 

Monrovia - The Chairman of the opposition Coalition for Democratic (CDC) Nathaniel McGill is calling for the implementation of the Code of Conduct, noting that doing so will determine the credibility of the 2017 presidential and legislative election.

McGill in a news symposium Wednesday said as a party that have faith in the rule of law, they will abide by whatever law that is pertaining to the elections.

“With reference to the Code of Conduct, our opinion is that the law should be deal with the Code of Conduct.

“If it is not dealt with in a fair and transparent manner, it could endanger the credibility of the elections before it even starts.”

“Anyone who is trying to give a different meaning to the law, that person is trying to undermine the electoral process and ensure that there is a crisis.”

Since the Supreme Court ruled on the Code of Conduct, politicians who believe they have been affected by article 5.1 of that law have issued disclaimers of not been affected by the law while others have pointed fingers specifically naming some major actor whom they believe are affected by the Supreme Court’s ruling.

In the case of Mr. Karnwea, he was named one month after joining the Liberty Party as vice standard bearer of the opposition LP two days after he resigned from the FDA, a decision many critics of the LP have said, is a complete defiance to the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Code of Conduct.

Some of those affected by the Code of Conduct and their supporters are confident of being let off the hook relying on the ambiguous definition of the word “desire” used in Section 5.1 & 5.2 of the Code of Conduct.

During the interview McGill argued that Article 51 of the Liberian Constitution states that there shall be a vice President and shall contest on the same political ticket with the President, so to McGill with this provision the definition for Desire given by many does not hold water or has no legal basis.

He expressed hopefulness that the pending election will be free, fair and transparent even though the CDC had earlier raised some issues with the voter registration process.

“We had some concerns with the voter registration process and we raised it and that is what we have tried to do during these periods of election."

"Our issue is not to accuse anyone of trying to manipulate the process, but to ensure that the process is free fair and credible.

 “There are attempts by some individuals who know they will not win election but want to cause confusion and the CDC will oppose anyone who knows she/he cannot win and wants to cause confusion. We are very prepared to compete with anyone at all fronts,” he stated.

 

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