Photo via charismamag.com

KENYA: Faith Leaders want to be Part of the 2012 Electoral Process

Kenyan religious leaders want the government to allow non-state actors such as religious communities to conduct voter education, peace building processes and interventions that create an enabling environment for peaceful, free and fair elections in 2012, reports CISA.

Speaking after a closed door meeting with the Chair of the Panel of Eminent African Personalities Kofi Annan in Nairobi on October 19, the religious community noted that time is of essence and added that healing and reconciliation issues need to be dealt with in the next 12 months.

The religious community expressed concern over trauma that still exists among communities, four years after the 2007-2008 post-election violence. “The deep divisions among our people as a result of the political campaigns for 2007 general elections have not yet closed. Many Kenyans are wounded…,” the statement read.

“Holding all the suspects of the post election violence to account is critical in bringing closure to the civil disturbances that Kenya went through and cracking on impunity,” they said while calling on Kenyans and the international community to continue pushing for the establishment of a credible local mechanism to try those who bear lesser responsibility in the post-election violence.

The leaders from the Christian, Hindu and Muslim faith said that they support the efforts of the Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission and the National Cohesion and Integration Commission in their efforts to foster healing and reconciliation and pledged to combine energies to preach peace, foster unity, heal and reconcile Kenyans.

They religious leaders urged the Panel of Eminent Personalities to supplement the efforts of Kenyans by exerting pressure on the political leadership to restrain from mobilizing for support along ethnic lines, saying, “The political process in Kenya appears to swing on the fulcrum of tribal blocks. Apart from making elections – particularly presidential elections mere tribal marathons, it also makes failure by the losing team a communal rather than a political party affair.”

They advised the political class to have confidence in the new Electoral Commission rather than discredit it even before it is born and called for empowerment of community economies in the grassroots to enable citizens generate wealth in order to arrest youth idleness that they said is an impetuous for violence as experienced in 2007.

Kenya is scheduled to hold its next general elections under the new constitution, next year.

New iPad POLL! VOTE NOW! Will you buy new iPad?

TAGS: Kenya religious leaders government 2012 electoral process Chair of the Panel of Eminent African Personalities Christian Hindu Muslim

[10/24/2011]

Print Version