Last week a referendum took place in Kenya to decide whether to accept a new constitution. Sixty-nine per cent of the vote was in favour. Approximately sixty-three per cent of the adult population registered to vote and about seventy-two per cent of the registered voters cast ballots. This was a good turnout.

Quaker peacemakers in the Great Lakes Region of Africa have learned that violence, unrest and underhand tactics can occur during elections. Consequently the Quaker and Mennonite organisations in the region have banded together under the auspices of the Quaker Peace Network – Africa (QPN) to observe elections. Since 2005 QPN has observed elections in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Kenya.

After the death of six people at a campaign rally in Nairobi from two grenades, the distribution of hate leaflets in some communities, and some hate speech as occurred before the 2007 Kenyan election that led to two months of violence, the referendum went surprisingly well with really no reported incidents of major violence. The government responded quickly to those who were using hate messages and, unlike 2007, the government posted extra security forces in the hot spots and announced this as publicly as possible.

Africa Great Lakes Initiative (AGLI) with Friends Church Peace Teams has been working in Turbo Division of Uasin Gishu District in the Rift Valley. It suffered during the last post-election violence in 2007-8. As a result we placed eight election observers in this one division. This was a prominent ‘No’ area because the ‘No’ campaign leader was the member of parliament from this area. Nonetheless the voting went smoothly with some of the polling stations recording up to ninety per cent ‘No’ votes. One polling station in the division, though, was won by the ‘Yes’ side.

In western Kenya QPN had fifty election observers. AGLI volunteer Andrew Peterson led the election observer training. He told the observers: ‘Supposed nothing happens at your polling station except the orderly voting and counting according to procedures. Will you have wasted your time? No, because your presence was perhaps the reason that nothing unlawful happened. The whole concept of election observing is that people will be careful if someone is watching them.’

Although not much happened at the polling stations, our presence was a valuable part of the process. We found that most of the polling stations had no neutral election observers and in one constituency, the QPN observer was the only independent observer.

The acceptance of a radically new constitution is only the first step in a long process to reorganise the government in Kenya. This process will not be easy as those who will be losing under the new arrangements will clearly try to keep their privileges. The next election is scheduled for 2012. There will be much more at stake during that election so emotions and the likelihood of fraud will be higher. Hopefully the order and the acceptance of the results by the losers of this referendum will not lull Kenyans into a false complacency. I am sure this will not happen with AGLI and the Quaker Peace Network.


David Zarembka is coordinator of the African Great Lakes Initiative of the Friends Peace Teams.
See www.aglifpt.org for more information.