By Sheriff Saidykhan
The Edward Francis Small Center for Rights and Justice (EFSCRJ) have recently launched elections watch to safeguard free and fair elections, ahead of the 2026 presidential race.
“The Edward Francis Small Centre for Rights and Justice hereby launches a platform to monitor political space including political parties, leaders, supporters, and their speeches and activities geared towards promoting:
Free, fair, and transparent elections.
Issue-based, peaceful, and decent political discourse.” according to the release.
The rationale of the initiative aimed at countering electoral malpractices, hate speech the release added do not only undermine the credibility of elections but also have the potential to generate political intolerance, polarization, and electoral violence.
“We have learnt from both our experience as a nation and around the world that when political parties, politicians and their supporters are left unchecked, the tendency for politics to deteriorate into indecency, electoral malpractices, human rights violations, and violence are high. Thus, we are determined to monitor, expose, and challenge political actors who promote tribal politics, division, hate, intolerance, disinformation, and unlawful practices in the name of politics.” the release added
The rights center encouraged political parties, leaders, and candidates to strictly adhere to the Constitution, the Elections Act and all democratic norms and standards to ensure that citizens are well-informed, actively participate, and are not abused or misled in any way.
The Center further called on the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) and stakeholders to ensure fair play and intensify the monitoring of the political space to ensure compliance with the law.
“We urge the IEC to enforce Section 92 on the Code of Campaign Ethics in the Elections Act in full.
The Inter-Party Committee (IPC) enforce its MOU and the Code of Conduct in full. Furthermore, we call on the IPC to ensure that all political parties develop an internal code of conduct to prevent, detect and punish hate speech, tribal politics, and political violence, and hold accountable its members and supporters who perpetrate electoral malpractices.
Political parties and candidates demonstrate leadership by upholding the spirit and letter of democratic competition. In this regard, we urge all political parties to establish internal code of conduct to promote and strengthen issue-based, decent, and peaceful politics. In this same vein, to establish necessary enforcement structures to monitor, detect and punish hate speech and tribal politics perpetrated by its leaders, members and supporters.”.
