IEBC Chief Executive Ezra Chiloba and Chairperson Wafula Chebukati [PHOTO/the-star.co.ke]
The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission has explained how President Uhuru Kenyatta beat Raila Odinga in the last general elections.
While presenting evidence at the Supreme Court on Monday, IEBC refuted claims that they rigged in President Uhuru Kenyatta, arguing that the results were a true reflection of the will of Kenyans in the vote.
The commission said Uhuru's victory was announced legally and built its case on the process of results transmission, the Court of Appeal ruling on the finality of results and Raila Odinga team’s behaviour during the polls.
“No one raised any issue on the tallying process. The final result is a reflection of what Kenyans wanted,” argued Senior Counsel Paul Muite representing the commission.
Lawyer Paul Nyamodi also said the pictures of forms 34A and 34B from the voting kits were the valid results, arguing that during the transmission IEBC had the two options of using either a purely electronic system or doing it manually.
“Elections in Kenya are not purely electronic. Results are delivered either electronically or manually,” the court was told.
The IEBC defence team defended Chairman Wafula Chebukati, saying he never altered any results he received from the constituencies.
Nyamodi said that whatever was aired on TV was meant to inform the public about the progress of the process.
“That is the journey of the result,” he said. “Those figures were not provisional results.
“A true reading of the decision is that the soft document that the second respondent used to declare the winner is Form 34B,” he added. “Provisional results were done away with. That court took away the ability to render any result as provisional.”
The team rejected claims that the poll results announced by the commission were computer-generated, adding that NASA officials refused to scrutinise original documents that IEBC was receiving from the ground.
The court heard that ICT's role in the elections was just like that of a courier.
“All it did was to transport the result from one place to another. It did not generate any results.”They also pointed out that the hacking issue was not raised by NASA in the petition.
“We have searched the length and breadth of the petition and that evidence does not appear,” he said.
The team pointed out that Raila demanded to be declared winner “with a tally of eight million votes” but the figures were missing from the case.