Nasa rejects IEBC plan to announce final presidential tally only - VIDEO

The National Super Alliance has rejected a plan by the electoral commission to announce the final results for the presidential election without periodic updates of figures changing when results trickle into the national tallying centre from constituencies.

Nasa says the move by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) is a “mechanism for manipulation and mischief”, demanding transparency in the tallying of presidential candidates’ results.

STATEMENT

James Orengo, a co-chairman of Nasa’s National Coordinating Committee, said in a letter to IECB chairman Wafula Chebukati on Wednesday that IEBC should play by its constitutionally assigned yardsticks of independence and promoting democracy.

“It would appear that the IEBC intends to bury itself at a bunker at Bomas on August 8, 2017 and then come out into the auditorium a day or two later to announce results which have not been received and tallied in an open and transparent manner. In effect, the country will be kept in an agonising suspense as the results are ‘cooked and doctored.’ It will be déjà vu,” said Mr Orengo in the letter released Wednesday evening.

On Tuesday, IEBC’s Chief Executive Ezra Chiloba said that unlike in previous elections, this year there will be no periodic announcements of the votes that presidential aspirants have received, noting that only the final tally will be announced.

But Mr Orengo believes the new arrangement is a fishy move.

“The periodic announcements at all levels are important to ensure that there is compliance and implementation of four fundamental constitutional principles: efficiency, transparency and credibility,” he said.

FORM 34B

“IEBC’s methodology is a platform for delay and fabrication of results and resonates a repeat of the tragic experience of the contrived delays in the 2007 General Election which were used to rig the presidential election,” added the Siaya senator.

Mr Orengo also took issue with Form 34B, the document that will be used to indicate candidates’ totals at constituency level, claiming that “it has no column or provision for entering the total results of votes garnered by each presidential candidate at the constituency”.

Instead, he alleged, the space for signatures on the form is on two separate pages “which again can expose the forms to fraudulent alterations or forgery at any subsequent stage at the constituency and national tallying centres”.