New rules to cushion IEBC from fresh Supreme Court battles

Kenyans could wait up to a week to know the winner in next week's repeat presidential election.

The IEBC is leaving nothing to chance and has come up with new regulations to seal loopholes that could see it dragged back to court again.

The long wait will be worsened by the IEBC’s admission that no results will be streamed in the polls that attracted great local and international interest.

The sharp changes are occasioned by a number of regulations fronted by the commission to comply with the last week’s High Court ruling, which gave leeway to inclusion of other candidates in the presidential ballot.

Earlier, the IEBC had only gazetted President Uhuru Kenyatta and NASA leader Raila Odinga for the fresh contest on Friday next week.

Last week, High Court judge John Mativo ordered the electoral agency to include Thirdway Alliance presidential candidate Ekuru Aukot in the race.

Raila has, however, maintained he will not participate in the October 26 election until the IEBC implements NASA’s irreducible minimum demands.

The opposition has declared daily street protests beginning today to push for reforms at the electoral agency.

Contained in the new changes is the mandatory requirement that IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati, who is also the national returning officer for the presidential elections, to manually verify all the 40,883 forms 34As from the polling stations before announcing the winner.

This means Kenyans will wait longer to know the final winner given the amount of time required to physically go through the voluminous forms.

After verifying the Form 34As, Chebukati is also required to verify what is contained in Forms 34Bs, before making Form 34C.

The law gives the IEBC seven days within which to count, tally and announce winner of the election.

The IEBC declared the nullified August 8 presidential results on August 11. Two days after voting.

The new regulation by the IEBC is meant to cure technical hitches that led to the cancellation of the August 8 presidential election results by the Supreme Court.

On Saturday, IEBC chief executive Ezra Chiloba, in a leaked memo, indicated that only Uhuru and Raila will have their results transmitted through the KIEMS gadgets.

In the memo, Chiloba said the kits had been reconfigured and due to time constraints, including the other five will make it impossible to have the polls as scheduled.

IEBC’s earlier communication had sidelined Chiloba in the preparation for the repeat exercise and instead named a project team to spearhead the process.

Last month Chebukati appointed Marjan Hussein, one of the two deputy CEOs to lead the team as project coordinator.

“The Results Transmission System will not be reconfigured to accommodate new presidential candidate owing to significant time constraints to successfully deploy the same,” Chiloba said in the memo dated October 14.

Even for the two candidates, only the Forms 34A and 34B results will be transmitted by the KIEMs gadgets with the presiding officers and returning officers instructed to key in zero under the text information in the transmission kits.

As was the case during the August polls, where results were beamed from the Bomas of Kenya, Kenyans will this time round be in the dark as the portal results will not be availed given not all candidates will have their results electronically transmitted.

The results from the five candidates gazetted last week will be physically taken to the National Tallying Centre at Bomas of Kenya for tallying.

The other candidates are Japhet Kaluyu, Michael Wainaina and Joseph Nyagah – all independent candidates – and Aukot of Thirdway Alliance.

The raft of changes developed by the IEBC to guide the repeat polls will also give presiding officers authority to open sealed ballot boxes at the constituency to retrieve any election material mistakenly stuffed at the polling station.

Currently, the Election Act requires that sealed ballot boxes after results are announced at the polling station can only be opened after obtaining a court order.

The IEBC document indicates that any presiding officer, who mistakenly puts election material in a sealed ballot box at the polling station need only to raise the matter with the returning officer at the constituency tallying centre and the sealed box will be opened.

The new regulations, however, requires the presence of the polling station agents at the constituency centre.

In situations, where the polling agents are unable to make it to the polling stations, the presiding officer will inform the commission, which will give further guidance.

 

 

 

 

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