IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati and his deputy Consolata Maina. PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP
The electoral commission will on Monday
announce results of the October 26 fresh presidential election and also
state whether it will hold the poll in 25 constituencies where it was
postponed.
IEBC
vice-chairperson Consolata Nkatha on Sunday evening said the commission
had received results from six of the remaining seven constituencies and
that by Monday morning all the results will be in.
“We
have received results from six constituencies now and we will be in a
position to announce the final results tomorrow morning. We will work
throughout the night to ensure that verification and tallying of the
received results is completed. We will also make an announcement on
whether we will conduct elections in the 25 constituencies where
election was postponed or not,” Ms Nkatha said Sunday.
The counties where the commission postponed the repeat election are Kisumu, Migori, Siaya and Homa Bay .
IEBC’s
communication has been sporadic but it is understood that the
commissioners spent hours in a meeting with its lawyers yesterday as it
considers whether to try and hold the election in the 25 constituencies.
Sunday
evening, Mr Chebukati said the commission had verified results from 259
of the 265 constituencies, plus the diaspora, where the election was
held.
VALID VOTES
From
those, he said, 7,447,014 people voted, representing a turn-out of
43.04 per cent. From the results on the screens at Bomas Sunday night,
with 256 constituencies confirmed, President Kenyatta had 7,393,405
votes, representing 98.3 per cent of the valid votes cast.
All
the other candidates had below 100,000 votes with opposition leader
Raila Odinga, who withdrew from the election, at 70,425 votes.
All
the results from the places where voting happened are expected to be in
Nairobi Monday and the commission will then declare President Kenyatta
the winner. This will also depend on whether the commission deems it
possible to hold elections in the 25 constituencies.
“I
want to assure you that what we are doing here, as chairman and
commissioners, we are satisfied that the process is being done properly,
in a free and fair environment. I expressed my concerns on the process,
I had my questions and most the concerns I expressed were answered,”
he said.
ABOVE BOARD
He
added: “As chairman, I can confidently stand here and tell you that the
process that we are now carrying on is above board. Except for the
areas which did not vote, I can confidently say that I am satisfied with
this process and the will of people who voted will be realised in these
ballots which we are counting here.”
The
commission initially wanted to hold the election in counties that did
not participate on Saturday but was told not to do so by the National
Super Alliance and religious leaders.
The
Elections Act provides for the IEBC to declare the winner of an
election if it is of the opinion that the results missing would not make
much of a difference.
It
states, in Section 55B (3): “Notwithstanding the provisions of this
section, the commission may, if satisfied that the result of the
elections will not be affected by voting in the area in respect of which
substituted dates have been appointed, direct that a return of the
elections be made.”
DECLARE WINNER
If
the IEBC declares the winner without the election having taken place in
all 290 constituencies as required in the Constitution, there would be a
legal question to grapple with.
An
IEBC official who briefed former South African president Thabo Mbeki,
who is heading the observer team from the African Union, said there had
been results from nine polling stations in Kisumu West.
The returning officers from the constituencies in Turkana were understood to be held up by bad weather.
On
the floor of the auditorium at Bomas, the former president of South
Africa was reluctant to discuss the findings of the team he led and to
react to questions on the events in the Nyanza region.
He
said the AU team had sent its observers to 18 counties and described
the verification he witnessed at Bomas as “very detailed” and “very
thorough”.
OBSERVERS
“You
know what observers do. We watched as people voted, we watched as the
polling stations opened and we watched as people voted and went to very
many,”
Mr Mbeki said he had
gone to stations in parts of Nairobi and Kiambu and witnessed
vote-counting and then at tallying centres where the results were put
together.
“We have come here
now and we were able to compare what we saw being sent at the
constituency tallying centres to what was received at the Bomas of Kenya
and to see what has been going on,” he added.
Mr Mbeki was taken through the process the staff on the floor of the auditorium have been undertaking in the verification.
He
looked bemused when told that the officers had been verifying each form
from the polling stations and then comparing that with the results
filled in form 34B by the returning officers.
“It’s a lot of work but it is very thorough,” he said.
ORIGINAL FORM
In one case, the returning officer for Molo constituency was reported to have delivered the photocopy of a Form 34A.
He
had left the original form in a photocopying machine and had to make
the six-hour return journey to collect it and come back to Nairobi.
The commission’s reliance on the physical forms delivered to Bomas extended to calculating the turnout.
The
presiding officers were required to send regular updates to Nairobi on
the number of voters using the Kenya Integrated Election Management
System (Kiems) kits.
KIEMS
Each
was also required to transmit the logs using the device at the end of
the voting, which would give the IEBC a real-time picture of the number
of people who voted at each polling station.
Last
evening, Mr Chebukati also sought to explain the apparent contradiction
he made on Thursday night, when he posted on his Twitter page
suggesting that the commission had earlier overestimated the turnout at
48 per cent.
He said the 48 per
cent was taken as the upper limit of a snapshot of logs from the Kiems
kit between 4 and 5pm on the day of voting.
As
at 5pm on Saturday, he said 36,882 of the 40,883 Kiems kits had sent
logs and 7,573,903 voters had been identified using the kits,
representing a voter turn-out of 42.8 per cent.
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