The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has set today afternoon as the most likely time to announce the official results of the presidential race, three days after Kenyans cast votes in the hotly-contested election.
Speaking during a media briefing at the National Tallying Centre at the Bomas of Kenya, IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati said the commission expects to have received all the Form 34A and 34B and verified them by midday today before announcing the winner. “We expect to receive the last Forms 34A and 34B by tomorrow (Friday) between 11am and noon.
We will validate the numbers and then tell Kenyans who is their President soon after,” Chebukati said. Form 34A has the collated results of all polling stations while Forms 34B contains summed up results from all polling stations in a constituency.
Chebukati said by yesterday afternoon, IEBC had received and validated Form 34A results reported from 29,499 out of the 40,833 stations across the country. However, 11,334 polling stations are yet to report their results.
The commission has also received Form 34B from 117 constituencies out of the expected 290 forms. “We have done our best to ensure the elections are transparent and credible. We have posted on our website all the Form 34A we have received and have asked Kenyans to have a look at them.
We are happy with the participatory democracy by Kenyans because by today over 300,000 people had downloaded the forms,” the chairman said. He said the commission has printed and shared with party agents all the Form 34A and 34B they have so far received and that their technical team has been collating the results to see whether they are consistent with those transmitted electronically.
The chairman also said the commission has conclusively responded to all the claims raised by Nasa over the possible hacking of IEBC servers. “There was no hacking of our system. There was an attempt but it did not succeed,” said Chebukati.
IEBC chief executive Ezra Chiloba said the results verification process being carried out by chief agents of the presidential candidates and the IEBC staff was yet to yield any discrepancies in the tallies thus far projected.
“The system is thorough since there is a process that is in place which includes the Returning Officer undertaking an almost similar process at the constituencies like this one before they sign off that particular form to forward it to the national centre,” Chiloba said.
The result verification desk was set up on Wednesday after Nasa presidential candidate Raila Odinga alleged that the poll agency’s servers were hacked. At the same time, Law Society of Kenya (LSK) yesterday commended the national elections agency for conducting the voting exercise in a transparent and credible system.
The LSK President Isaac Okero, accompanied by Vice-President Faith Waigwa, appealed to IEBC to complete the tallying and verification of the presidential results as required under the electoral laws and the Constitution. Electronic transmission Okero told any aggrieved political leaders and unsuccessful candidates the Judiciary and the legal uately prepared to handle any election disputes.
“We, therefore, plead with Kenyans to remain calm as we wait for the declaration of the presidential election results and for all other elective posts,” the LSK boss said in a press briefing.
He recalled that the IEBC had conducted a demonstration of its results transmission system at the Bomas of Kenya on August 2 and the LSK observer mission was highly impressed by the in-built transparency mechanism.
The session was attended by the political stakeholders, diplomatic corps, the public and the press one week before the polls. Okero said the IEBC team had displayed mock real-time scanning of the Forms 34A from various polling stations, the electronic transmission to the national tallying centre and the display of provisional results that were automatically updated.