The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) lawyer Kamau Karori has argued that the petitioners set out to make chairman Wafula Chebukati the villain in the August polls, whilst he was just discharging his duties as per the Constitution.
During the Supreme Court hearing today, Karori observed that leaders should take note that the commission does not decide who becomes president the decision is made by the people.
“It is critical that it becomes clear to political leaders that the decision as to who will be the leader of this country is made at the polling station, the commission agents who declare the results are just doing their job if there is a problem with numbers that you got the problem is not the declaration but with the people that you did not persuade to vote for you in sufficient numbers,” he said.
Karori drew attention to the fact that three IEBC commissioners who were attacked and hurt on live television on August 15 just before the announcement of the presidential election results.
“Members of certain political parties decided that it was time to stop a process that had already started (declaration) we all watched in horror on TV as members, some in this court confronted the chairperson and threw down the pulpit that he was supposed to announce the results; The intention was to stop the declaration from being made,” Karori said.
The IEBC counsel stated that the process was transparent from the voting, tallying, verifying, and declaring of results, an exercise he claims was undertaken in front of all party agents, regarding the subject of illegalities and anomalies on forms 34A.
“If the declaration of results is a plenary decision, the question we start with is what is the decision that needed to be made at the national tallying centre? There is absolutely no decision that should be made at the national tallying centre, none. Only thing that needs to be done is an arithmetic exercise which is tallying, aggregating results and verify that the form brought by constituency returning officers form 34A is original, compare with which transmitted electronically,” Karori noted.