Pressure on Kenyan body for poll results
• Almost a quarter of polling station forms not released
Observers piled pressure on Kenya’s election commission on Thursday to complete publishing result forms from every polling station, a day after the opposition said it would challenge the outcome in court.
Observers piled pressure on Kenya’s election commission on Thursday to finish publishing results forms from every polling station, a day after the opposition said it would challenge the presidential outcome in court.
Defeated opposition leader Raila Odinga claims the electronic results were hacked and manipulated to hand victory to President Uhuru Kenyatta. He plans to take his complaint to the Supreme Court.
The failure of the Independent Election and Boundaries Commission to publish all 40,883 “34A” forms, as required by law, makes it impossible to verify the presidential result, which last week gave Kenyatta 54% of the vote.
The Carter Centre election observation mission, headed by former US secretary of state John Kerry, said it urged the commission “to finalise the posting of the 34As as expeditiously as possible”.
“Access to official results data is critical for interested parties so that they can crosscheck and verify results and exercise their right to petition if necessary,” the mission said.
Using an electronic vote tallying system, officials at polling stations used tablets to send their figures to the national counting centre in Nairobi.
According to law, scanned forms were meant to accompany these.
Odinga, the leader of the National Super Alliance, has until Friday to lodge his complaint at the Supreme Court.
The election commission says it has posted online scans of all 34B forms — which are put together in 290 constituencies from the tallied 34As. However, more than a week after the vote, nearly a quarter of the 34As have still not been made public, according to an analysis of the current data seen by AFP.
“Publishing results by polling station is an internationally recognised means to ensure transparent electoral processes and increase public confidence in the integrity of the results,” the Carter Centre said.
The National Democratic Institute observer mission said publishing all the forms was an “urgent matter in light [of] the seven-day time limit to file legal challenges” after Friday’s announcement of the presidential result.
This is the fourth time Odinga has challenged for the presidency and the third time in a row that he has cried foul. Violence in the wake of the election has left 17 people dead.