Tag: GreatLakesNews

In Kenya, voter registration exercise for the March 4, 2013 general election was kicked off by President Mwai Kibaki who registered on Monday.

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) is counting on cutting-edge technology to prepare a new and more accurate voter’s roll.

With memories of the botched disputed 2007 election still fresh, IEBC is approaching the voter registration knowing full well that a botched voter registration process could have negative consequences for the credibility of the coming election.

The registration will be a test for an electoral body still struggling to demonstrate integrity and competence, having just bungled the original plan to procure biometric voter registration equipment under circumstances that forced the Cabinet to move in to save the situation.

The stakes are especially high for IEBC because it is more or less boxed in by a constitutional provision which says that the election must be held in March 2013.

In just a month, IEBC must put in place a system that will capture and store voter information at the same time making sure that the register is secure and without errors.

The technology will identify voters by name, age, photograph and fingerprints.

The registration kit consists of a lap top, a finger print scanner and a printer. And each unit will have an external drive for data storage, a long lasting battery for power where electricity is vulnerable and a weather proof case to protect delicate electronics.

Registering 20 million voters in two months is going to be a massive exercise that will test IEBC’s competence and efficiency in major ways.

Kicking off the exercise, President Kibaki issued a stern warning to those who want to disrupt voter registration that they will be dealt with firmly.

The preparations will in 103 days culminate in the election of a President, governors, senators, MPs, women representatives and county representatives. It will be the first under the new constitution.

Registration is on-going in all constituencies and will end on December 18.

Nation Media

The Uganda government has blamed the escalation of fighting in eastern Congo on a leaked U.N. report that accused it and Rwanda of supporting Congolese rebels.

Uganda’s Junior Foreign Affairs Minister Asuman Kiyingi said his government had been forced to retreat from its mediating role.

“Uganda was mediating in this conflict … and we had managed to restrain M23,” Minister Kiyingi said Tuesday.

Three Kenyan soldiers in plainclothes were shot dead by assailants in Garissa on Monday while changing a flat tyre at a car garage.

The attack on the soldiers came a day after a bomb was thrown at a moving vehicle in Nairobi killing 10 people.

And the British High Commission in Nairobi on Monday advised its citizens to exercise extreme caution and avoid any gatherings in Eastleigh.

” On Sunday 18 November 2012 a grenade was thrown at a bus near to St Teresa’s church on First Avenue in Eastleigh, Nairobi. Casualties have been reported.

The attack has been followed by violent clashes. You should exercise extreme caution and avoid any gatherings in this area,” the high commission advised its citizens.

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At least seven people were killed Sunday when an explosive detonated in a mini-bus in Nairobi, sparking fears of a fresh terrorist attack.

Several other people were injured and rushed to nearby hospitals, following the explosion in the Eastleigh estate on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital.

The Kenya Red Cross confirmed that at least 15 casualties have been transferred to the referral Kenyatta National Hospital.

The explosion in the mini-bus was caused when an attacker hurled a grenade in the ‘matatu’ vehicle, witnesses said.

The attack was near St Teresa’s Catholic Church. Eastleigh is inhabited mainly by Kenyans of Somali origin or Somalis.

Kenyan police have been struggling to maintain calm after violence erupted with people of Somali region being targeted.

The Kenyan capital has been a target for terrorist attacks since the Kenyan army rolled into neighbouring Somalia for a military operation against Al-Qaeda-allied Al-Shabaab militants.

The coastal city of Mombasa has also not been spared, with a grenade attack last Friday seriously wounding four people.

Congolese media has reported that the M23 Rebels in DRC have called for immidiate talks with DRC government In a statement released Sunday.

In the statement, the rebels demanded for cessation of hostilities and direct negotiations in 24 hours.

“These negotiations must involve particular Congolese opposition, civil society and the diaspora.

They also demand the demilitarization of the city of Goma and its airport, controlled by the loyalist army supported by MONUSCO, and the reopening of the border Bunagana,” said the statement.

Meanwhile, Vital Kamhere the former president of the DRC’s National Assembly (2007 -2009) has told government to silence guns and talk to M23 rebels.

The rebels are currently said to have advanced into Goma city.its fall to the rebels is a major achievement to the rebels.

“It’s time to silence the guns and talk with the rebels in order to avoid the repetition of history,” Kamhere said Sunday.

In a press statement on the security situation in the eastern DRC, Vital Kamhere considered that the army was “infiltrated” the Congolese soldiers are dying on the front “for nothing.”

Some 113 rebels died in clashes on Thursday between the M23 rebel group and Democratic Republic of Congo troops, the regional governor said, as violence flared days after the UN and US imposed sanctions on the group’s leader.

The fighting early Thursday near the eastern city of Goma came a day after the UN said armed groups in the region slaughtered over 200 people including scores of children between April and September.

Julien Paluku, governor of the resource-rich North Kivu province whose capital is Goma, added that “a few” members of the DR Congo government forces (FARDC) were wounded in the clashes, along with the 113 rebels killed, up sharply from a previous toll.

Gunmen shot dead two police officers in the north eastern Kenyan town of Garissa Friday, police said, just days after an ambush in a different part of the country in which 42 policemen were killed.

“Two police officers have been killed. They were on patrol when gunmen shot at them and fled,” a senior police officer who visited the scene said.

“Their guns were taken … we suspect Shabaab militia,” he added, referring to Somalia’s Al Qaeda-linked fighters.

Area police chief chief Philip Tuimur confirmed the incident but did not elaborate.

Last weekend, an ambush on Kenyan police left 42 officers dead as they hunted cattle thieves in Baragoi, a remote district in Kenya’s arid north.

It was the deadly ever attack on the police.

Kenya has suffered a wave of grenade and gun attacks, often blamed on Shabaab sympathisers and sometimes aimed at police targets, since its army went into Somalia last year to flush out the Islamist fighters.