Who should announce presidential results? NASA, IEBC lock horns

The Court of Appeal on Tuesday, June 6 started hearing a vote tallying case in which the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) is seeking to reverse a High Court ruling on the tallying of presidential polls in the August 8 General Election.

The High Court of Kenya, through Justices Weldon Korir, Aggrey Muchelule and Chacha Mwita on April 4, 2017 ruled that presidential election results announced at the polling station and constituency levels will be final, a ruling the IEBC has since contested.

The opposition, National Super Alliance (NASA), which was enjoined in the case on May 16, 2017 has since opposed IEBC’s move, saying that the poll body wants to retain the right to announce the final results so that it can doctor the polls – a motive that the Opposition says is influenced by Jubilee.

The electoral agency argues that its Chairperson, Wafula Chebukati, is the only presidential elections returning officer as per the constitution, and that he should be given powers to scrutinize, verify and correct results from Constituency Returning Officers (CROs).

“If results declared by CROs at constituency level will be final, without any collation and tallying, then we will have 290 presidential election results as opposed to one,” IEBC through its lawyer, Paul Nyamodi, argued.

NASA called upon the Court of Appeal to dismiss the case and re-instate High Court’s ruling, saying that poll officials at the constituency level are duly gazzetted members of IEBC and therefore working closely with the head office in Nairobi.

By virtue of being IEBC members, NASA reads mischief in why the commission wants to alter results relayed by their team members.

“In the Kriegler Report, it was clearly demonstrated that results declared at Constituency level in Molo and Kirinyaga were different from what was declared at the National level. This is exactly what we sought to avoid in 2017 elections,” NASA through its lawyer, Willis Otieno, argued.

On their part, the state through Attorney General Githu Muigai, wants the High Court ruling recanted as Judges in a court of law do not have powers to amend the constitution at any given point and dismissed NASA’s claims of not trusting the electoral agency because they fought for a new team to come – a decision which the government bowed to by disbanding the Isaac Hassan-led commission.

NASA protested the continued stay of the previous commissioners in office and the jubilee faction agreed with them leading to installation of a new team of commissioners.

“NASA didn’t want the previous commission to preside over the election. The government agreed with them, for the sake of a free and fair election. A new team was put in place after intense vetting. Now they are saying that they don’t trust the results that the chairman will declare,” argued the AG.

The case continues Wednesday, June 7, 2017.