By GEOFFREY MOSOKU and AUGUSTINE ODUOR
Saturday, March 09, 2013
Prime Minister Raila Odinga now says that it is only the Supreme Court that will determine if Uhuru Kenyatta’s election as fourth President of Kenya is legit.
Raila disputed and rejected the declaration of Uhuru as the winner of the March 4, elections citing what he termed as massive irregularities that marred the polling exercise and subsequent tallying.
The Cord leader claimed there was massive tampering of the results, saying the figures were cooked indicating that he will provide evidence to support his claim.
“Let the Supreme Court decide and determine whether the result announced by IEBC is lawful. We are confident the court will restore the faith of Kenyans in the democratic rule of law,” Raila said.
The Premier did not indicate the day they intend to move to court but in accordance to the constitution, they have seven days from Saturday when Uhuru was declared to lodge the petition in court. The Supreme Court will then have 14 days to hear the dispute and make a ruling.
“We have new independent judiciary in which we in Cord and most Kenyans have faith. It will uphold the rule of law, and we will abide by its decisions,” Raila said.
He said that in spite of the numerous complaints raised by the Cord leadership, IEBC ignored them and went ahead to present results from a flawed electoral tallying process. Raila said they had made many complaints formally in writing to IEBC but none of their concerns were addressed.
“We have highlighted so many irregularities in the tallying process,” the PM said and accused the Kenyan media of ignoring the coalition’s complaint. “There was a conspiracy by the local media to give us black out on the issues we raised; only the international press was covering it.”
Cord’s concerns are majorly from what they believe is a systematic and deliberate failure of technology employed by the electoral body to identify voters and transmit results electronically, which failed in spite of billions of shillings which had been used to procure them. The Cord now believes this failure was a sabotage intended to interfere with the voting and tallying process.
On Monday, the voter identification kits failed across the country forcing IEBC to revert to manual register in identifying registered voters. The Electronic Voter Tallying System also collapsed on Tuesday, further giving IEBC another blow, with the commission resorting to manual tabulation.
“Two days after the vote, the electronic tallying process was discarded and counting began afresh, manually. That too turned out to be flawed exercise in which, among other things, three was massive tampering with the IEBC voter register,” the PM said.
He claimed that voter registration numbers from some of the Cord strongholds were reduced and added to Jubilee and cited Ndhiwa where he alleged the number of voter listed were different from the one captured and announced results by IEBC.
Raila, while addressing reporters in Nairobi on Saturday evening, urged his supporters to be calm and allow the court to adjudicate the matter. The PM issued a statement, which he termed as democracy on trial.
He cautioned against any violence and called on all Kenyans to respect the rule of law and to look upon each other as brothers and sisters.
“Any violence now could destroy the country forever, and that would not serve anyone’s interests,” he said.
The Cord leader cited a decision by the IEBC to eject its agents from the tallying room as part of the scheme to manipulate the results saying the country, has lost faith in the IEBC.
By Saturday, the Cord team was preparing what they have termed as a dossier to support their claims of massive irregularities in court.
Although, the team as cited Laikipia North, whose results they claim were read and tabulated twice, by Saturday evening they had established over 30 constituencies where they say the voter turnout was either over one hundred or results were adjusted to give Uhuru an advantage.
Cord claims that some constituencies in Jubilee strongholds saw results being adjusted by a figure of between 2,000 to 10,000 votes; with the results being declared by IEBC at the Bomas of Kenya being different from the actual votes declared at the constituency level.
Some of the constituencies they claim are affected include Kilgoris, Mathira, Kieni, Buuri, Imenti North, Pokot South, Ndhiwa among others.
For instance in Kieni, the Cord team claims Uhuru scored about 62,000 but IEBC read a result of over 72,000.
Source: Standard