Raila seeks nullification of President-elect’s win

Kenya: Prime Minister Raila Odinga sought invalidation of the March 4 presidential election results on the basis that the electoral body mismanaged it by failing to deploy appropriate technology to discourage theft and manipulation of votes. Making his presentation of evidence for the fi rst time before the Supreme Court, the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy candidate argued the issue was not whether he trailed Mr Uhuru Kenyatta but if the president-elect got the requisite 50 per cent plus one vote to avoid a run-off. “This is not about Uhuru and Raila but the future of Kenya and future elections,’’ said his lead lawyer, Mr George Oraro. He painted a grim picture of what, in his view, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission did: “Take a few votes from one candidate in other places and inflate those of one candidate by a few hundred votes (each time)…then you achieve the results that you want.’’ Oraro told the court illegalities committed by the electoral commission affected the final results in which it declared Uhuru the winner in first round. He accused IEBC of fiddling with the voters register resulting in the manipulation of the election outcome in favour of Uhuru. “In respect of the voters’ register, the law has been violated in every respect,” Oraro submitted. The lawyer told the court that the registration of voters was the cornerstone of any election adding, “the illegality and unconstitutionality of the registration process affects the voting exercise as a whole”. Contradicting figures Raila also accused the commission of failing in its duty by acting with impunity, committing corruption, and neglect of public duty in the acquisition of Biometric Voter Registration kits. Oraro, who was making submissions during the hearing of the petition challenging the election of Uhuru, said that the election process was tainted with “illegality, unlawfulness, and unconstitutionality”. “We will prove that there were massive irregularities and these elections did not satisfy the required standards,” added Oraro. He argued that the commission had failed to conduct a process that meets the threshold of the requirements set out in the constitution. We ended up with an election which nobody can confirm if it was accurate, transparent and fair according to international standards,” said Oraro. The counsel told the court there were instances where the commission indicated contradicting figures for the total number of registered voters. He recounted what he called the fraudulent and corrupt ways, in which IEBC engaged in, that finally led to failure to take up appropriate electronic and other technological support mechanisms to enhance integrity of elections, in particular the Biometric Voter Register. “In the absence of electronic voter identification, the voting system became prone to manipulation,’’ said Oraro in his two-hour presentation that came after that of Africa’s Centre for Open Governance (Africog), which is the second petitioner. Oraro told the judges that the whole problem began after IEBC gave the tender for supplying the BVR kits to Face technology, a company he said, was unable t provide the right equipment. He noted that there was corruption in the acquisition of the BVR kits, adding that manipulation of the voters’ registers was also evident. Oraro argued, for instance, that the commission kept a ‘special’ voters’ register which saw about 30,000 extra voters being allowed to vote whose details were not captured by BVR kits. Votes Transfer He gave the example of Turbo constituency where he said people were allowed to vote in stations they were not even registered in, amounting to transfer of voters. Oraro told the court that 36,236 voters were not in the biometric register while in some places there were 31,000 people who were not reflected in the IEBC documents. He further accused IEBC of repeatedly interfering with the voters register even after its closure. He added that since the commission didn’t have a principle register, the actual number of voters registered could not be known. Oraro, who will continue giving his evidence today for 100 minutes, told the Judges the electronic transmission was not an option for IEBC, but a necessity as required by law. He said that according to the law, the presidential results were to be electronically transmitted to IEBC Headquarters after being declared in polling stations by Presiding officers with the approval of all the party agents. Oraro further noted that the electronic transmission was critical in preventing the “cooking of figures” between the polling stations and IEBC Headquarters, adding that the system’s collapse was not a small matter as IEBC sought to suggest to Kenyans. Final results “IEBC has been telling Kenyans casually that the failure in the electronic system was not a threat to the integrity of the results. But the truth is that the failure opened up loopholes that seriously affected the integrity of the results from the polling stations. Form 34 would have been used later to confirm if the same results declared in polling stations were to be used in tallying the final results,” he added. Africog, through its lawyer Kethi Kilonzo, had listed out assisted by television footage, areas where the figures announced at the constituency level varied when reported at the tallying centre. Ms Kethi told the six-judge Bench led by Chief Justice Willy Mutunga, who is also the President of the Court, that the situation was the same in various other centres. Kethi gave the examples of Nyeri and Bomet counties where she demonstrated through the video clips how returning officers announced their figures, which, she said, were different during the final tally at Bomas of Kenya. She gave the example of Nyeri where she said after the vote had been concluded, Uhuru was reported to have garnered 317, 881 as per the returning officer at the County. But when the tally was finally announced at the main tallying centre at the Bomas of Kenya, Uhuru was declared to have garnered 318,880 votes which was an increment of about 1,000 votes. At the same time Kethi told the judges that Raila at the same County was announced to have garnered 6,075 votes but when the results were made public at Bomas they had reduced to 5,638. “He (Raila) is not the only one, Kiyiapi lost votes, Karua lost votes, Musalia Mudavadi lost votes. Even the little that you have would be taken away from you. The only candidate who then benefited from this difference is the President-elect and Peter Kenneth,” she told an attentive courtroom.