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POLITICS-KENYA: NGOs Bolster Women Candidates&#39 Media and Voter Savvy

Kwamboka Oyaro

NAIROBI, Dec 26 2007 (IPS) - A number of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have come to the assistance of female candidates ahead of Kenya&#39s general elections, scheduled for Thursday, in the hope of giving them a fair shot at the polls – this in a country where lack of funds, resistance to women in leadership positions and various other factors tend to undermine women&#39s electoral performance.

Just 18 of the 222 legislators in the country&#39s last parliament were women, and only nine of these won their seats: the others were nominated to parliament. This put Kenya in an unfavourable light with regard to its neighbours in East Africa. Against the 8.1 percent of seats that were held by women in Kenya, 30.4 percent of seats in Tanzania and 29.8 percent of seats in Uganda are in female hands.

The NGOs include the Association of Media Women in Kenya (AMWIK), which has itself received support from the Gender and Governance Programme in Kenya: an initiative funded by the United Nations Development Fund for Women and other donors that aims – in part – to strengthen women&#39s leadership at community and national level.

Acting AMWIK Co-ordinator Jane Thuo told IPS that the programme had enabled her association to show women in Kenya&#39s eight provinces how to deal with the media.

"We trained them in how the media operates and its role in enabling the women to reach their voters. Initially the women feared publicity, but when they understood that to become leaders they must present themselves to the public and (that) media is a critical tool, they changed," she noted.

Thuo said certain trainees had been emboldened to seek media exposure.

"Before the training, most of the women said they didn&#39t want their photos to appear in the papers and others did not even want to talk to journalists about themselves. But now their visibility in the media has given them some mileage, and I believe this will contribute to more being elected."

The League of Kenya Women Voters has also tried to help women candidates.

Irene Oloo, executive director of the grouping, says its approach was to establish which women were interested in contesting the local, parliamentary and presidential elections – then "sieve the serious from those not serious."

Of the 2,548 aspirants who are on the ballot for legislative polls, 269 are women (10.6 percent of candidates) – while almost 1,500 of the 15,332 candidates for local councils are women (9.6 percent). One of the nine presidential candidates is a woman.

"Leadership is about serious commitment and we wanted our women to be dedicated. Once we found them…we built stamina and the resilience needed in leadership, and I am optimistic many of the ones we handled will make it," Oloo told IPS.

The league has enabled women to share their experiences and demonstrate "solidarity with one another, a fact that has encouraged more women to participate in elective politics."

It has also showed candidates how to approach voters, and deal with issues such as fears on the part of some that women are unable to hold government positions. Candidates were shown that that they could respond to these concerns by asking voters what male legislators had done in their constituencies that women could not.

"If women have run families successfully, why not give them the authority to run constituencies?" asked Oloo.

For its part, the Kenya Women&#39s Political Caucus – another beneficiary of the Gender and Governance Programme – has chosen to train the trainers.

The group instructs persons described as "community mobilisers" who then go on to train and promote women who aspire to leadership positions, including election candidates (the initiative is not restricted to the current electoral campaign).

"Success depends on how one presents oneself before prospective voters. The mobilisers package the women in terms of appearance and how to speak, what to say and (at) what time and to whom," Debora Okumu, executive director of the caucus, told IPS.

"It (the training) will go on until we get equitable representation of women at all levels. Right now we are striving to have a third of women involved at every level of decision making in this country." (It is widely held that women need to occupy about a third of seats in a parliament to begin influencing the work of that legislature.)

Just over 14 million people are registered to vote in the elections, in which the presidency, 210 parliamentary seats and approximately 2,500 local council posts are to be filled. A further 12 legislators will be nominated to parliament.

More than 100 parties are competing for votes. However, attention is largely focussed on the two front runners in the presidential race: President Mwai Kibaki, who heads the Party of National Unity, and the Orange Democratic Movement&#39s Raila Odinga. The contest between the two is described as one of the tightest ever in Kenya&#39s electoral history.