Welcome back to my blog fellas. Today was a busy day for me. We are at it again though. Clearly the elections is over but not over yet for parliamentary candidates. Some constituencies are yet to declare winners for the member of parliament representatives. I will try and talk about that later in the post. However, today, let us delve into security matters with regards the elections. How safe are we as a people? Was the report by the internal and external monitoring bodies right? Was the election a smooth and violent free one? Let’s delve straight into it.

Shootings

As of yesterday, death tolls due to shootings stood at 5 as against 8 people last year. Injured persons who have been hospitalized are not part of the numbers counted. This is sad for our nation. Where are our security personnel when these occurrences begin to brew. Do they have to wait till there are casualties before they react? Our security really matters and I hope that more training will be given to community members to make use of toll free numbers of our security services whenever the need arises.

EC offices

Some offices of the Electoral Commission have been vandalized and the officials attacked due to tensions in declaring results for the Member of Parliament for the area. There is the need for proper security in these hotspot areas because why should polling agents be attacked and some silenced for the sake of someone’s political ambition? The training for these officials however needs to be intensified while making sure that they have security backgrounds before qualifying for the position to enable them pick on some nuances, and report them quickly in their line of work.

MP attacks

There has been reports of ransacking of offices of some MPs who lost their seats. For whatever reason, that is not a good thing because they already lost. Why attack them? To the extent that some have had to flee their residential properties because the places have been attacked. If this is how we treat our leaders then I am afraid nobody will like to become one. This habit of taking matters in our own hands need to stop.

Violent jubilation

Security experts have put measures in place for a violent free elections. That notwithstanding, we sometimes fail to acknowledge the violence that happens during jubilation. The motor rides that some of the youth use as a display of their skills during jubilation can sometimes cause accidents and killings. In my neighborhood for instance, there were gunshots in the air which I suspect was from some security officials on the winning side.

Police briefing

I have really tried to avoid the news because of the violent stories I have picked on which I think is traumatizing. But watching a snippet of the news tonight I heard the police press briefing which I think was related to some of the aforementioned violent incidences during and after the elections. See, no election is won gently but sometimes we need to check it. The police can assure us of safety but we need to speak to our family members who are so engulfed into politics to sometimes weigh the options and act civil.