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in the Kenyan electoral process with a view to manipulating Monday’s presidential elections. And the coalition also demanded that the
Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission should stop tabulating the percentage of votes won by the presidential candidates based on the total number of votes cast.
The coalition’s running mate in the presidential election, William Ruto, accused unnamed foreign ambassadors in Kenya of “canvassing” to deny the coalition what he termed as a clear win in the elections.
“We are very concerned at the level of involvement of ambassadors and foreigners canvassing for various positions in these elections. We know for sure that certain embassies have had positions in respect to these elections,” Mr Ruto said.
He further said some of those involved in canvassing were strangers who have no direct roles to play in the process.
The Press conference was triggered by an announcement earlier by IEBC chairman Mr Issack Hassan in which he said the commission would reset the tabulation formula.
He said the commission will work with the total number of votes cast rather than the total number of valid votes.
Pressed to cite instances and give examples, Mr Ruto said the matter would be raised properly with the concerned authorities.
Mr Ruto asked supporters to be patient and await the official announcement of results based on official documentation.
Earlier, top level Jubilee Coalition leaders led by Ms Charity Ngilu unsuccessfully attempted to confront the IEBC chairman over the matter.
“Invalid votes should not count. We are demanding that the commission should continue to give results based on the valid votes counted, attempts to use any other formula is illegal and unacceptable,”Ms Ngilu said.
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Mr Hassan said at the Press conference on Tuesday that parties’ representatives had asked about the legal definition of votes cast in the Constitution as opposed to valid votes.
“Our understanding of the words ‘votes cast’ is that it is any vote that has been put in the ballot box, whether it is a valid vote or a rejected one. So that’s what we mean by votes cast,” he said.
“These screens are showing different numbers . . . They are showing valid votes, they are showing disputed votes and they are showing rejected votes. During the tallying centre calculation and the official announcement of results, we’ll have to calculate them properly . . . what is the actual votes, the votes cast in the whole country,” Mr Hassan said.
Hassan, however, cautioned that the law gives the commission a deadline of Monday should they encounter challenges in the tallying of results.
“We want to be realistic with all of you. Some officers are being airlifted to Nairobi. Early in the morning on Friday, we should announce the official results,” said Mr Hassan.
The high number of rejected votes has emerged as the new battleground in Kenya’s tight presidential race between Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga.
Should the rejected votes be included in total votes cast, Mr Kenyatta’s 53,36 percent lead will drop by three percentage points, while Mr Odinga’s 42,09 percent would also go down by three percentage points.
“As per the constitution and as explained this morning, the screens will be adjusted to reflect the percentage of votes for each candidate based on total votes cast,” said Mr Hassan.
This statement caught the eye of the Jubilee Coalition representatives led by Charity Ngilu.
Mrs Ngilu informed other supporters about the likely effect of this and after an unsuccessful attempt to meet with the IEBC officials, the coalition held a hurried Press conference.
The coalition’s running mate, William Ruto, explained: “IEBC all of a sudden has changed the manner in which they are calculating and tabulating on the presidential votes. The chairman himself announced late this evening that indeed they are going to change the way they are calculating the presidential result percentages to include invalid or spoilt votes.”
Mr Ruto said the Jubilee coalition was concerned at the change in the computation method and would “want to believe that this is not an attempt to deny the Jubilee Coalition a first round victory as is clearly now on the wall.”
“We believe invalidated votes, votes that have been declared invalid or rejected cannot form any basis whatsoever of a calculation of a presidential result. We haven’t seen this happen anywhere. We do not know why it happened this way,” he concluded.
Jubilee, in a nutshell, is arguing that casting a vote means delivering a valid ballot paper in the right box.
Taking a contrary view, the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy issued their interpretation of the law and the IEBC’s actions at a press conference convened minutes to midnight.
Franklin Bett, ODM’s National Elections Board chairman, based his arguments of Article 138 (4) (a) of the Constitution and the Election Regulations published in November 2012.
He said: “The word shall is used in (138 (4) (a)) and it shall be 50 plus one per cent of cast votes. Total of all the votes cast in an election. I want to specifically state on behalf of Cord that any vote indicated up there (on the screens) votes were cast. They were placed in a ballot box so they must be part of all the votes cast. If the votes were spoilt, they were cast before they were spoilt. They cannot be defined any other way. If English means anything, that is what it means.”
In the English version of the Kenyan Constitution, Article 138 (4) states that: A candidate shall be declared elected as President if the candidate receives — (a) more than half of all the votes cast in the election; and (b) at least 25 per cent of the votes cast in each of more than half of the counties.
Rejected votes are dealt with and defined in Sections 77 and 78 of the Election Regulations.
A vote is classified rejected if it: does not bear the security features determined by the Commission, appears to be marked against the names of more than one candidate, is written or marked such that it is uncertain for whom the vote has been cast, bears a serial number different from the serial number of the respective polling station and which cannot be verified from the counterfoil of ballot papers used at that polling station or is unmarked.
After votes are identified as rejected, the presiding officer is required to mark each with the word “rejected” and if an objection is made – presumably by a party agent – to write “rejection objected to” on it.
The regulations also require that the presiding officer mark every ballot paper whose validity has been questioned with the word “disputed”.
That paper is however treated as valid for the declaration of result at the polling station.
boardroom near the auditorium instead of the room in another building where the actual tallying is taking place. – Daily Nation.
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