Friday, March 18, 2011

Polls timeline must be followed to the letter

Posted Thursday, March 17 2011 at 19:51

Now that the Commission on the Implementation of the Constitution has clarified the issue, there should be no more debate or dispute on the date of the next General Election.
August 14, 2012 is the date when Kenyans should troop to the polls to elect their next President and Deputy President, as well as Members of Parliament, Senators, Governors and County Assemblies.
The clarification was necessary in the light of creative interpretations by some MPs who are campaigning to prolong their stay in Parliament to December next year or even up to March 2013.
It is, therefore, highly likely that the MPs will react furiously to the August date.
Some of them have been arguing that the new Constitution provides for the present Parliament to serve out the full five-year term.
They argue that they were elected in December 2007 and, therefore, it would amount to cutting short their tenures if the elections were called before December 2012.
Others argue that the present House first sat in January 2008, and that is when the countdown of five years should have begun.
Still, others argue that they must remain MPs for a full five years before the House is dissolved, which would push back the polls to March 2013. Those arguments only betray schemes to hold on beyond the stipulated mandate.
They ingeniously ignore the inconvenient fact that even under the old constitution, a five-year term never meant a full five years as an MP; the House was always dissolved a few months before the expiry of five years to allow for the nominations and the campaign period.
We hope the matter of the election date is now settled so that Parliament can focus on the legislation urgently required to pave the way for the first general elections under the new Constitution.

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