Kenyan presidential results - Kenya’s presidential vote tallying lurched into further trouble Thursday after the main Coalition for Reform and Democracy (CORD) running mate, Kalonzo Musyoka, said the exercise lacked integrity and called for it to be stopped until the electronic transmission system was restored.
Musyoka, the running mate of Raila Odinga, the CORD Presidential candidate, alleged that their party poll agents were kicked out of the presidential vote tallying centre and results from several constituencies were being doctored before being sent to the tallying centre.
“There was a total failure of the Electronic Vote Transmission system and we have evidence that results we are receiving are actually being doctored. In some cases, total votes cast exceeded the number of registered voters,” Musyoka said.
The Coalition said it was concerned by the higher than normal returns for constituencies such as Bureti, Kajiado South, Runyenjes, Wajir North and Kathiani, among others.
In Kajiado South registered voters were 41,040. Presidential candidates Uhuru Kenyatta had 24,000, Odinga had 17,500 James Ole Kiyapi 186, Peter Kenneth 127, Musalia Mudavadi 106, Martha Karua 44, Mohammed Dida 14 and Paul Muite nine. The total was 41986.
The country’s electronic vote transmission system appeared to fail on a massive scale on Monday during the voting, which saw a 70% national voter turnout, but international election observers ruled that the electronic system failure did not affect the integrity of the process.
“The Law requires that voting results be transmitted electronically from polling stations to the National Tallying Centre before ferrying the actual results from the polling stations to protect them from being doctored,” Musyoka told journalists in Nairobi.
The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Chairman, Issack Hassan, said the failed electronic system had been rectified and was due to start functioning efficiently again on Wednesday night.
The IEBC said the failure of the system had nothing to do with the technology supplier, Safaricom, the mobile firm that supplied the software and the mobile phones required to transmit the results to the IEBC directly.
Musyoka accused the IEBC of its failure to address issues raised by Safaricom on the electronic voter tallying system.
“Because of these concerns, we as a coalition take the position that the national vote tallying process lacks integrity and has to be stopped and restarted using the Primary documents from the polling stations,” Musyoka said.
The Coalition called on their supporters to remain calm, tolerant and peaceful.
Pana 07/03/2013