Bullets and ballots

One of our Christmas cracker mottos (no jokes in Kenyan crackers) advised us that the ballot is stronger than the bullet. Both have been frequent subjects of our family chats over the last couple of months as the forthcoming March elections here dominate the local media and the terrible shooting in Newtown filled the international news. Although gun deaths here are still nothing compared to the US, there are plenty of guns in evidence in Nairobi - armed police protect shopping malls, direct traffic and there are regular press reports of suspected criminals being killed by police during arrests. Almost all the employees of the Kenyan wildlife Service carry guns, although we are not convinced they will come across many poachers in the Nairobi national park car park. And we all wonder whether, in a crisis, these guns will actually help. Over a thousand people died in post election violence here in 2008 and a significant proportion of them were shot with police/army weapons.

As for the ballots,Kenyan Presidential elections have pretty much been the news since we arrived last year, over shadowing even their US equivalent. With the election date only 15 days away we are now into full swing of electioneering and posters have been put up all over town, and then covered with others' posters, which in turn have been fly posted over again.

Political rallies pop up all over the place, with lorries covered in posters, lots of music and loudspeakers and dire consequences for the journey home. We had the first stage of the Kenyan elections - some fairly chaotic party nominations - a couple of weeks ago and Kenya's first ever televised Presidential debate on Monday, with all 8 aspirants saying their bit. In true Kenyan style the debate started late, accommodated all 8 candidates only after a court case to allow the last 2 in the polls a voice, over ran and it was pretty tricky to spot any policy commitments. But really exciting for everyone to get a chance to hear from all the candidates rather than just their tribal default and whilst its still too early to see if it impacts on voting in 2 weeks time the polls suggest it may have. Memories of 2007/8 violence are everywhere but there is also lots of cautious optimism that the lessons have been learnt

The election itself is pretty complicated with 6 different votes, all on different coloured ballots all of which have to be posted in the right box. And lots of rules about handling "assisted" voters - those who cant read the ballot paper and so are allowed "a friend" to help them vote. Kenya is a highly educated country and one of the big lessons from last time round was over the surprisingly large number in this group. The Presidential vote is the highest profile but local Governor elections are likely to be as hotly contested, with all the potential that brings for localised problems. There has been lots of work to explain all this to voters and loads of ads on the radio urging peace. We are off to a charity Movie premier on Thursday to promote peaceful elections.

There has also been a lot of work since 2007 to reduce the potential for cheating. Snazzy electronic registration based on fingerprints took place in November - I watched the trainers learning how to use them at a local centre.

This is meant to stop dead people from voting (which happened at scale last time) and large numbers of names have been taken off the register in the last few months for registering twice so it looks like its having an effect. I'm hoping to be an election observer (assuming various court cases to stop the interfering international community from seeing what's really going on are quashed) and I spent Friday morning learning about a large number of ways people try and cheat so I know what to look out for and what to report. Of course any large scale corruption of the vote wont really happen at the polling stations but through pre election intimidation and post election manipulation of the figures. But I still suspect my experience is going to be a bit different from my friend Pat when she was an election observer in Tooting!

Anne