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Kenya Vote Fraud Described
Observers Saw It Occur In Nairobi Tallying Center
By SHASHANK BENGALI
McClatchy Newspapers
January 31, 2008
NAIROBI, Kenya — The spark for Kenya's firestorm of ethnic
violence was lit inside a cavernous meeting hall in downtown
Nairobi, where election officials over four days doctored vote
counts, dismissed eye-popping irregularities and thwarted
monitoring by independent observers to deliver a razor-thin
victory to President Mwai Kibaki.
Observers who were allowed into the vote-tallying center on Dec.
29-30, hours before the results were announced, said there was so
much systematic fraud by Kenya's government-appointed election
commission that it's impossible to know who really won.
The extent of the commission's deceptions has faded into the
background as more than 800 Kenyans have been killed in ethnic
clashes and police crackdowns. The events also have deeply
unsettled the Bush administration, which has relied on Kenya as an
ally in the war on terror and a bulwark of stability in East
Africa.
Official results gave Kibaki an edge of 231,728 votes, or 2
percent, out of about 10 million cast. Initial results of an exit
poll by the U.S.-funded International Republican Institute found
that rival Raila Odinga had won by an 8 percent margin.
Election officials allowed five accredited Kenyan observers into
the tallying center in Nairobi only in the final phase of
vote-counting, and three of them shared their accounts with
McClatchy. All said that the gravest cheating occurred in that
room, where commissioners — all appointed by Kibaki — compiled
returns before announcing them to the public.
The observers spoke in interviews and quoted from a joint log of
their experiences, titled "Countdown to Deception," which Kenyan
rights groups are circulating.
The long-serving chairman of Kenya's election commission played an
active role in the deception, the observers said. When a tallying
officer presented results showing voter turnout at 115 percent in
Maragua, a Kibaki stronghold in the central highlands, commission
Chairman Samuel Kivuitu didn't invalidate the result as required
by law, but allowed a commissioner to reduce the figure to 85
percent and announced the results an hour later.
That was the pattern that observers reported: Results were
announced even when documents were missing, incomplete, unsigned
by officers or party representatives, incorrectly tabulated,
photocopied or forged.
"Both sides stole votes," said Julius Melli, a 31-year-old Kenyan
radiographer who witnessed the tallying of Maragua. "But Kibaki
stole more, and they stole it inside the tallying center."
"These people were criminals," said Ben Sihanya, a
Stanford-educated constitutional law professor who also observed
the tallying. "They were committing crimes at the behest of
Kibaki's government."
Election officials were unreachable for comment, but the
commission has taken out a two-page, unsigned advertisement in
Kenyan newspapers to deny wrongdoing.
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