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2017 KENYA ELECTIONS

Chebukati dismisses NASA victory claims, results quoted fake

“There’s only one election management body in this country and that is IEBC. This is the body mandated to run elections, count ballot papers and it is our job after counting to announce those results. If a candidate brings results to us, we cannot take those results,” Chebukati affirmed/MOSES MUOKI

NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 11 – National Super Alliance (NASA) demands that its leader, Raila Odinga, be declared the winner of Tuesday’s presidential election have been slammed.

The Chairperson of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission Wafula Chebukati said Thursday night that the demands by NASA were unconstitutional and a direct violation of the independence of the electoral agency.

“There’s only one election management body in this country and that is IEBC. This is the body mandated to run elections, count ballot papers and it is our job after counting to announce those results. If a candidate brings results to us, we cannot take those results,” Chebukati affirmed.

He further said that the claims by Odinga’s alliance were not backed by any evidence, describing figures quoted as final presidential results as false since the alleged database the Opposition claims they originated from is in fact not the Commission’s.

“The letter we received from NASA doesn’t contain forms 34A and 34B so we cannot ascertain what the basis of their results is. There are no anomalies reported up to this point between the transmitted results and what is being tallied,” Chebukati said.

The IEBC chief also revealed that a total of 40,501 forms 34A out of 40,883 and another 170 forms 34B out of 290 had been received at the National Tallying Centre by 8pm Thursday night.

Chebukati said that the Commission was working towards getting results declaration forms from the remaining polling stations yet to file forms 34A as well as constituency tallying centres yet to submit forms 34Bs by midday Friday.

“Our team is working very hard to verify the numbers and ensure that we deliver credible final results,” he stated.

While appreciating the commendable job done by his staff countrywide, Chebukati said all IEBC officials are committed to ensuring the will of Kenyans on the ballot prevails, urging presiding and returning officers yet to file their returns to work expeditiously so us to complete the tallying of election results.

The Commission also reiterated its stance on the alleged hacking of its servers, Commissioner Abdi Guliye saying no hacking had been reported and that there were measures in place to guard against internal and external intrusion.

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“There has not been any hacking and we’ve not reported on any. The story about hacking is something that is not there at all. We’ve invested heavily in security systems and we’ve deployed various personnel to monitor on a 24-hour basis the integrity our system,” Commissioner Guliye asserted.

On Thursday, NASA purported to have gained access to an IEBC database with “legitimate results” suggesting that Odinga had won the State House with 8,041,726 votes against President Uhuru Kenyatta’s 7,755,428.

NASA’s alleged results however had inconsistencies including the number of registered voters.

Other inconsistencies in the document supplied by the opposition alliance include the number of votes cast exceeding the number of registered voters in a number of some counties.

In Siaya County, for instance, the Opposition claims that a total of 482,772 votes were cast despite the number of registered voters in the county indicated as 457,953.

The total number of registered voters in Nyamira County is indicated as 278,853 yet the total number of votes cast is 2,411,731 according to Odinga.

The NASA document placed the voter turnout at 18,362,556 which is indicated as 73.8 per cent of the total number of registered voters. This figure comes to 93.6 per cent when computed against the number or registered voters.

So far, two presidential candidates – Ekuru Aukot (Thirdway Alliance) and Japheth Kaluyu (Independent) have conceded defeat.

President Uhuru Kenyatta still maintains a sting lead of about 1.4 million votes in provisional results having garnered 8.1 million votes against Odinga’s 6.7 million with about 400 polling stations out of 40,883 nationwide yet to report.

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Notable election observer missions have given Tuesday’s election a vote of confidence in their preliminary reports.

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