NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 15 – The four Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), who disowned and distanced themselves from the presidential results declared on Monday, have disclosed their reasons.
IEBC Vice Chair Juliana Cherera, Commissioners Francis Wanderi, Irene Masit, and Justus Nyang’aya listed four reasons for disowning the results which saw William Ruto declared President-elect by the Commission’s Chairperson Wafula Chebukati.
The four maintained that the process was “opaque” and accused Chebukati of keeping them in the dark during the five-day exercise of verifying and tallying results at the Bomas of Kenya – the Commission’s national tallying center.
The aggregation of the percentages garnered by the four presidential candidates was the first basis for the four to disassociate themselves from the results.
“Chebukati presented a mathematical absurdity that defies logic,” Cherera, who read the statement, noted.
They cited that the final tabulation issued by Chebukati, which arrived at 100.01 percent, was erroneous.
“We, therefore, declined to take ownership of the said results because the aggregation resulted in a total exceeding the 100 percentage, which cast doubt on the accuracy of the source of the figures tallied,” Cherera said.
According to them, the 0.1% translates to approximately 142,000 votes, which would have significantly impacted the final result.
The Commissioners also pointed out that the results issued by Chebukati lacked a critical ingredient of the total number of registered voters, the total number of votes cast, or the number of rejected ballots.
“In the absence of a credible and verifiable explanation, we concluded that the process that went into the generation of FORM 34C, which Chebukati used to declare results of the presidential election, was opaque and incapable of earning our ownership and confidence,” Cherera said.
They also argued that the results were not processed and analyzed by all the Commissioners as required by law.
“Chebukati conducted the election as though he is the National Returning Officer, a nonexistent role, and his role in declaring results that were not approved at plenary by all seven commissioners,” Commissioner Wanderi said.
The commissioners also accused Chebukati of declaring the results without factoring in figures of other constituencies.
Azimio La Umoja presidential candidate Raila Odinga who lost in the polls has since vowed that he would pursue “all constitutional and legal options” after rejecting the outcome of the elections.
The former Prime Minister branded the result of the August 9 race a “travesty” but stopped short of explicitly announcing that he would mount a challenge at the Supreme Court.
“What we saw yesterday (Monday) was a travesty and a blatant disregard of the constitution and the laws of Kenya,” he told a press conference in Nairobi, blaming the head of the commission that oversaw the poll.
“I do not want to address our strategies going forward fully but… we will be pursuing all constitutional and legal options available to us.”
Odinga narrowly lost his fifth bid for the top job to Deputy President Ruto, who was proclaimed president-elect Monday after a nail-biting wait for results.
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