John Adoyi, PBA Journalism MenteeFour officials of the Independent Electoral and Boundary Commission (IEBC) the body in charge of elections in Kenya have given reasons for rejecting the presidential election result that was announced on Monday evening.
The electoral body chairman, Wafula Chebukati, declared William Ruto as winner of the election conducted on August 9.
The four officials include the vice-chairperson of the commission, Ms. Juliana Cherera and others like Francis Wanderi, Irene Masit and Justus Nyang’aya.
While addressing a press conference in the Kenya’s capital, Nairobi on Tuesday, the officials said they raised some concerns about the outcome of the election to the chairman of the commission but he insisted on announcing the result.
They claimed that the chairman did not get the endorsement of all officials before going ahead to announce the result even though he had been told that the result is mathematically incorrect and that results exceed 100 percent when put together.
According to The Star, a local media, the four officials led by Ms Cherera said
“This summation gives us a total of 100.01 percent. This translates to approximately 142,000 votes which will make a significant difference in the final results, “they said.
Listing the results of the four presidential candidates of the August 9 presidential elections, they said “the president-elect William Ruto got 7,176,141 votes (50.49 percent of the votes) while Raila Odinga, his closest rival got 6,942,930 (48.85 percent of the votes).
“Other candidates like George Wajackoya got 61,969 votes (o.44 percent of the vote) while David Waihiga got 31,987 (0.27 percent).
“However, 0.01 percent of the 14,213,027 total votes cast translates to around 1,400 votes. This is mathematically impossible so the result is null and void.”
The officials also said that they rejected the presidential result because the tally of the votes did not include total registered voters, vote’s casts and votes rejected and adding that it’s unconstitutional.
“Unless demonstrated otherwise, we all know that the percentage represents a fraction of a whole number. For instance the 7.17 million valid votes cast in favour of the winning candidate translated to 50.49 percent then it was 50.49 of what?” Cherera asked.
Other reasons they gave include that Mr. Chebukati said both Raila Odinga and William Ruto both got 25 percent of total votes cast from 34 and 39 counties respectively which according to them is impossible because Kenya only has 47 counties.
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Siting the law guiding the dealings of the electoral commission, the officials said the law requires that all 7 members of the commission must approve the result before any announcement that Mr. Chebukati only announced his own result.
Recall that these four officials on Monday announced their rejection of the election result because it is opaque and have no form of transparency.
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