On Monday, March 11, 2013, Warigia Bowman wrote:

Asante Henry.

Thank you for these valuable insights. I personally saw two biometric kits fail and two phones fail out of five stations. There should have been an earlier procurement process and much more careful testing.

Warigia

On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 9:50 AM, Henry Maina <henry@article19.org> wrote:

Dear All,

The overall performance of the local media in the just ended elections cannot be made by whimsical and quirky inferences. However, it is possible using some anecdotal evidence to isolate some critical contours.

1. The media suffered from self-censorship and over-depended on the feeds from IEBC without even questioning anything? No media house reported authoritarively on the high voter turn-out and how would raise the 50+1 threshold. Given that most media houses had this information why did we have a story around this figure. This would not have amounted to announcing the results.... Further, the media never followed up on reported cases of some election officials issuing two or three ballots papers per position even after complaints were made in Nairobi, Kakamega and Uasin Gishu

2. The media over for fear of being blamed for incitement censored even ground breaking leads on cases of malfunctoning IEBC

3. The media cannot and should not go to bed with election managers for it to receive "recognition." l still await the big story pointing out how much money was gobbled up to purchase the pollbooks and voter verications kits and why they failed. This was a national scandal that was taken to be normal. In my village they di not work. We offered to help the team charge them and

4. The police have been praised for helping to ensure peace. In most stations I visited Administration Police barred even candidates from getting into the stations and insisted that they can only get to about 40 metres away. In fact one AP told the Presiding Officer that she was in charge and did not care what he felt. This clearly implied that officers were in charge of the polling process in some stations. I await a story about such officers. This is the only way to entrench democracy

HENRY O. MAINA

________________________________________
From: kictanet [kictanet-bounces+henry=article19.org@lists.kictanet.or.ke] on behalf of Edith Adera [eadera@idrc.ca]
Sent: 11 March 2013 05:25 PM
To: Henry Maina

Cc: KICTAnet - Media Editors Forum; KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions

Subject: Re: [kictanet] [mediaeditors] Role of the Media in Kenyan Elections

A+

From: David Makali [mailto:dmakali@yahoo.com]
Sent: March 11, 2013 5:18 PM
To: Edith Adera
Cc: KICTAnet - Media Editors Forum; KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions
Subject: Re: [mediaeditors] [kictanet] Role of the Media in Kenyan Elections

I disagree:
This boils down to the role of the media in a democratic society. Is it to abet the erosion of rights or to promote transparency and the expression of the popular will of the people? i see people on this forum trying to tweak the responsbiility of the media to their selfish interests - peace, investment and other pr concerns. those whose rights have been trampled by a fraudulent election are portrayed as a distraction in the grinding mill of our oh-so-good democracy and pretended peace. their protests are being pooh-poohed as anti-peace. i would rather not be part of this peace and tranquility bandwagon and stare the hard facts in the face. i would rather opt for the painful truth and justice path. it is the route to long lasting peace and democracy. it is the rationalisation of injustice and wrongdoing that breeds dictatorship and oppression. we must decline the popular excuses at every election that we are young and maturing, that in the interest of peace, we gloss over our failures and move on. this time, let us get it right. there should be no violence, but neither should threats of incitement be used against those who pursue their rights or the truth.
the media has an obligation not just to give voice to those who are aggrieved but to go out on a limb to establish the veracity of their grievances. they cannot abdicate that responsibility as they have so far done on the pretext of keeping the peace. a sleeping press is not good even for peace. no.

- makali

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From: Edith Adera <eadera@idrc.ca<mailto:eadera@idrc.ca>>
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--
Dr. Warigia Bowman

Assistant Professor
Clinton School of Public Service
University of Arkansas
wbowman@clintonschool.uasys.edu
http://democratizingegypt.blogspot.com
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View my research on my SSRN Author page:
http://ssrn.com/author=1479660
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