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Kenya officials
pre-determined election result
Web posted at: 1/19/2008 4:32:51
Source ::: AFP
nairobi * A leading Kenyan rights coalition said yesterday it had
witness evidence that electoral officials had sought a
pre-determined result in disputed presidential polls in which Mwai
Kibaki was declared winner.
Testimonies from four observers who witnessed the last phase of
the December 27 poll "expose what can only be termed a resolve
among electoral officials-including commissioners and staff-to
obtain a pre-determined outcome, whether supported by fact or not,"
said the report compiled by the Kenyans for Peace with Truth and
Justice.
Entitled "Countdown to Deception: 30 hours that destroyed Kenya",
the text is based on statements from four of the five domestic
election observers allowed into the Electoral Commission of
Kenya's verification process.
It claims to document "critical highlights of Kenya's deviation
from democracy".
In a detailed hour-by-hour log of events at the ECK on December 29
— the night before Kibaki was declared re-elected — the report
blasted the verification process as flawed with "anomalies,
malpractices and illegalities".
It listed failings in electoral regulations, including the
announcement of results for one constituency —Dagoretti, in
Nairobi — which took place as vote tallying was still going on.
In some places voter turnout was more than 100 percent, but
officials allowed returning officers to "correct" results to more
realistic figures, added the report.
The coalition of rights groups and legal and non-governmental
organisations also said provisional vote totals were sometimes
declared as official, despite only being received by telephone.
In other cases, original documents were replaced by photocopies or
did not have official stamps — leaving ample opportunity for
potential fraud, the report claimed.
One returning officer from the northern town of Moyale appeared at
midnight at an ECK counting centre without the required forms,
before he slipped "into a doze" and the results were announced
hours later "without any documentation" to back them up, it added.
"It is clear that the electoral anomalies and malpractices
experienced during the counting and tallying of our electoral
process were so grave as to alter its outcomes," the report said.
"Some of those electoral anomalies and malpractices were, in
addition, illegal — thus rendering the supposed presidential
outcome not only illegitimate but also illegal. We therefore
consider Mwai Kibaki to be in office on his first term."
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