Dr. Job
JF-Expert Member
- Jan 22, 2013
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Did Uhuru really win? If so what do we do? - Onyango Oloo
It is becoming increasingly clear that the ululations and jubilation from the frenetic supporters of the Jubilee Coalition crowing triumphant about the alleged Round I "victory" of Uhuru Kenyatta and his running mate may have been a bit premature.
Two weeks after the March 4 Presidential polls, there are emerging questions and doubts from many quarters in Kenya.
For instance, there was this story which was splashed on the front pages of the Weekly Citizen, a Nairobi based tabloid that is often a controversial conversation piece among Kenya's chattering classes-even as it is slammed hypocritically as one of gems of the country's so called gutter press. What many of us have found out that some of the country's top journalists, investigators, political parties and even members of Kenya's security intelligence use Weekly Citizen as a fail safe conduit if they want to leak something that is too hot for the mainstream press. One always has to sift through the sensationalist salt and pepper that is liberally spiced on the stories to get to the kernel of the truth.
Here is the story I am talking about.
To give you an excerpt:
Several contingency plans were made to ensure the plan succeeds. One was to ensure that the Kikuyu and Kalenjin voter turn-out was to hit 95% while hoping that CORD base's turn-out would remain at the traditional 65% to 70%.
Like many assumptions made by the Jubilee strategy team, their plan on turn-out was based on assumptions that CORD's base would barely attain their traditional turnout.
The second critical factor was use of technology to help add up numbers as the infamous tyranny of numbers depended on factors outside Jubilee's control.
This plan to be used was borrowed from Ghana's December 2012 Presidential Elections. The election which is now being contested at the Ghanian Supreme Court was won by President John Mahama who was announced to have secured 50.7% of votes, enough to avoid a run-off against NPP candidate Nana Akufo-Addo with 47.7%. Akuf-Addo has filed a petition with evidence that the vote was won by manipulating the electronic system.
CORD supporters have set up the Democracy on Trial portal where you will find a lot of information.
The influential Africa Confidential London-based newsletter has devoted a considerable chunk of its current edition in looking at some of the issues bedeviling the Kenyan contest.
Many friends of Kenya like the internationally respected Jamaica born, US-based revolutionary thinker and Pan Africanist, who was recently in the country have gone on the record in calling the March 4 elections and electoral fraud as you can see from this piece he did for the widely read Pambazuka online newsletter that reaches upwards of 500,000 readers every single week.
Peter Greste, blogging on the Al Jazeera site, is also demanding that election flaws need answers.
Mainstream publications have weighed in with their various takes on the putative, if contested Uhuru Presidency. That darling of Western policy wonks, Foreign Policy magazine, tags Mr. Kenyatta as
"Kenya's Most Wanted" even as it advises the United States that it must find a way to work with its East African ally, even if it's run by an accused perpetrator of crimes against humanity, in this piece by Suzzane Nosel.
The Economist, in its March 16th edition calls Mzee Jomo's son as a "chip off the old Kikuyu block" who must convince Kenyans that he is his own man.
The Atlantic argues that "the credibility of the vote won't come from technical soundness but from political goodwill" in their March 14th edition.
One can add that many PROGRESSIVE candidates did not make much headway, given the way Kenyan mainstream politics is dominated by money, tribalism and petty personality squabbles.
But returning to the Presidential, Parliamentary and County contests, let us ponder on the following special Kenya Gazette officially confirming who was elected on what party ticket across the country.
We have to mull over what it means when Kenyans, in six out of the eight former provinces voted overwhelmingly for Raila Odinga and the CORD team. What does this say about the moral and national legitimacy of Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto across Kenya. We still ruefully remember that the Jubilee celebrations took on an overtly ETHNIC tone largely restricted to the Gikuyu, Meru, Embu and Kalenjin strongholds of that alliance. What are the implications for national harmony and unity?
Gaddo, who comments editiorially through his cartoons for the Nation Media Group-the largest media house in the East and Central African region, had this offering:
It looks like the Uhuruto tag team are not wasting any time in getting their hands on the levers of state power. Mr. Kenyatta is already acting Presidential complete with his heavy duty security detail and outriders. A few days ago he got a high profile briefing from senior state bureaucrats on how to handle the transition to the highest office in the land.
Onyango Oloo
It is becoming increasingly clear that the ululations and jubilation from the frenetic supporters of the Jubilee Coalition crowing triumphant about the alleged Round I "victory" of Uhuru Kenyatta and his running mate may have been a bit premature.
Two weeks after the March 4 Presidential polls, there are emerging questions and doubts from many quarters in Kenya.
For instance, there was this story which was splashed on the front pages of the Weekly Citizen, a Nairobi based tabloid that is often a controversial conversation piece among Kenya's chattering classes-even as it is slammed hypocritically as one of gems of the country's so called gutter press. What many of us have found out that some of the country's top journalists, investigators, political parties and even members of Kenya's security intelligence use Weekly Citizen as a fail safe conduit if they want to leak something that is too hot for the mainstream press. One always has to sift through the sensationalist salt and pepper that is liberally spiced on the stories to get to the kernel of the truth.
Here is the story I am talking about.
To give you an excerpt:
Panic has gripped the Jubilee Coalition headed by Uhuru Kenyatta as details unravel on how the 2013 Presidential Elections were manipulated to hand him a win by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission – IEBC, that is now the subject of a Supreme Court petition.
The emerging details point to a shocking scheme hatched by circle of advisors and government functionaries within the intelligence and civil service, way before the elections.
Analysts scrutinizing documents ahead of the Supreme Court petition by the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy challenging the results, were struck by how technology was also used to aid Uhuru "defeat" Raila Odinga of CORD.
"Kenyans can remember well that some curious things happened with regard to the so called provisional results that IEBC kept churning out", says one of the lawyers handling the CORD petition.
"It was a statistical impossibility. Between March 4[SUP]th[/SUP] – March 7[SUP]th[/SUP], Raila Odinga was consistently stuck at 43/44% while Uhuru stayed at 53%. Musalia was stuck at 2.8% while the margin between Uhuru and Raila remained at 600,000-700,000 votes. This was impossible considering that results were coming in randomly from all over Kenya. Yet these figures remained consistent".
After a confusing Friday 8[SUP]th[/SUP] March when IEBC postponed announcement of final constituency results till Saturday, a quick operation was put in place to force acceptance of the results, amidst anxiety by Kenyans that the voting process had been manipulated.
IEBC's James Oswago reportedly called media houses late in the night for a surprise final announcement of constituency results Friday 12.30am without indicating who had won. Throughout the week IEBC had warned media from declaring anyone the winner. However 30 minutes later KTN and NTV got a "nod" to call the elections. From there on events moved quickly. At 1.30am KTN flew a banner indicating Uhuru Kenyatta was the winner. Several stations in surprise followed suit. Kenyans would wake up on Saturday morning to all TVs proclaiming "President Uhuru", almost 12 hrs before Isaack Hassan finally announced Uhuru's win on Saturday afternoon.
The Weekly Citizen in this exclusive report can now report stunning details of a rigging plot that would have passed undetected if all players had stuck to the script and the "tyranny of numbers" theory had not fallen flat on its face on March 4[SUP]th[/SUP].
According to CORD insiders and several statistics analysts who have examined the IEBC voter register when it closed on Dec 18th, over 1,500,000 extra votes were "unexplained votes" votes that were for the presidential result alone. Since according to the IEBC, every voter was given 6 ballot papers, IEBC will be hard pressed on how this happened.
If these allegations are proven then, Uhuru's tally will render his 6,173,433 vote announced by the IEBC to 4,673, 433. Which could mean that Raila Odinga could have won the election if what CORD claims is true.
The well calculated scheme was based on 3 critical things that had to be done to force in Uhuru. The most important was to force a first round win for Jubilee.
"It was obviously clear to us that any run-off would result in an anti-Kikuyu vote in which only Kalenjins and Kikuyu's would vote for Uhuru while Raila takes off with the rest of the country', says Central Kenya Senator Elect over drinks at a popular Nairobi spot on the day the IEBC announced Uhuru as President. "Winning Round One was never an option. It had to happen"
Getting the numbers was an issue that had worried TNA strategists one year before striking an alliance with William Ruto's URP as the Jubilee Coalition. Even if Ruto's Kalenjin backyard was convinced to vote for Uhuru, the numbers Kalenjins brought in were still not enough. Though the "Tyranny of Numbers" propaganda was sold as a winning formula, insiders knew the truth held a different reality. The 50% was simply not there. The best Jubilee could manage was force a run-off their researchers said they would lose.
The tyranny of the numbers was the psychological component of the whole game; and the so was "PEACE" campaign enterprise, says a member of the civil society.
"It is funny that the tyranny of numbers theory perpetuated by Political Analyst Mutahi Ngunyi done in February 2013 mentions the same figures Uhuru got in the final tally" says popular blogger Robert Alai.
The emerging details point to a shocking scheme hatched by circle of advisors and government functionaries within the intelligence and civil service, way before the elections.
Analysts scrutinizing documents ahead of the Supreme Court petition by the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy challenging the results, were struck by how technology was also used to aid Uhuru "defeat" Raila Odinga of CORD.
"Kenyans can remember well that some curious things happened with regard to the so called provisional results that IEBC kept churning out", says one of the lawyers handling the CORD petition.
"It was a statistical impossibility. Between March 4[SUP]th[/SUP] – March 7[SUP]th[/SUP], Raila Odinga was consistently stuck at 43/44% while Uhuru stayed at 53%. Musalia was stuck at 2.8% while the margin between Uhuru and Raila remained at 600,000-700,000 votes. This was impossible considering that results were coming in randomly from all over Kenya. Yet these figures remained consistent".
After a confusing Friday 8[SUP]th[/SUP] March when IEBC postponed announcement of final constituency results till Saturday, a quick operation was put in place to force acceptance of the results, amidst anxiety by Kenyans that the voting process had been manipulated.
IEBC's James Oswago reportedly called media houses late in the night for a surprise final announcement of constituency results Friday 12.30am without indicating who had won. Throughout the week IEBC had warned media from declaring anyone the winner. However 30 minutes later KTN and NTV got a "nod" to call the elections. From there on events moved quickly. At 1.30am KTN flew a banner indicating Uhuru Kenyatta was the winner. Several stations in surprise followed suit. Kenyans would wake up on Saturday morning to all TVs proclaiming "President Uhuru", almost 12 hrs before Isaack Hassan finally announced Uhuru's win on Saturday afternoon.
The Weekly Citizen in this exclusive report can now report stunning details of a rigging plot that would have passed undetected if all players had stuck to the script and the "tyranny of numbers" theory had not fallen flat on its face on March 4[SUP]th[/SUP].
According to CORD insiders and several statistics analysts who have examined the IEBC voter register when it closed on Dec 18th, over 1,500,000 extra votes were "unexplained votes" votes that were for the presidential result alone. Since according to the IEBC, every voter was given 6 ballot papers, IEBC will be hard pressed on how this happened.
If these allegations are proven then, Uhuru's tally will render his 6,173,433 vote announced by the IEBC to 4,673, 433. Which could mean that Raila Odinga could have won the election if what CORD claims is true.
The well calculated scheme was based on 3 critical things that had to be done to force in Uhuru. The most important was to force a first round win for Jubilee.
"It was obviously clear to us that any run-off would result in an anti-Kikuyu vote in which only Kalenjins and Kikuyu's would vote for Uhuru while Raila takes off with the rest of the country', says Central Kenya Senator Elect over drinks at a popular Nairobi spot on the day the IEBC announced Uhuru as President. "Winning Round One was never an option. It had to happen"
Getting the numbers was an issue that had worried TNA strategists one year before striking an alliance with William Ruto's URP as the Jubilee Coalition. Even if Ruto's Kalenjin backyard was convinced to vote for Uhuru, the numbers Kalenjins brought in were still not enough. Though the "Tyranny of Numbers" propaganda was sold as a winning formula, insiders knew the truth held a different reality. The 50% was simply not there. The best Jubilee could manage was force a run-off their researchers said they would lose.
The tyranny of the numbers was the psychological component of the whole game; and the so was "PEACE" campaign enterprise, says a member of the civil society.
"It is funny that the tyranny of numbers theory perpetuated by Political Analyst Mutahi Ngunyi done in February 2013 mentions the same figures Uhuru got in the final tally" says popular blogger Robert Alai.
Several contingency plans were made to ensure the plan succeeds. One was to ensure that the Kikuyu and Kalenjin voter turn-out was to hit 95% while hoping that CORD base's turn-out would remain at the traditional 65% to 70%.
Like many assumptions made by the Jubilee strategy team, their plan on turn-out was based on assumptions that CORD's base would barely attain their traditional turnout.
The second critical factor was use of technology to help add up numbers as the infamous tyranny of numbers depended on factors outside Jubilee's control.
This plan to be used was borrowed from Ghana's December 2012 Presidential Elections. The election which is now being contested at the Ghanian Supreme Court was won by President John Mahama who was announced to have secured 50.7% of votes, enough to avoid a run-off against NPP candidate Nana Akufo-Addo with 47.7%. Akuf-Addo has filed a petition with evidence that the vote was won by manipulating the electronic system.
Similar to the Ghanaian case, the company that supplied Kenya's IEBC with the electronic data and call centre services is Ken Call. The company whose connection to IEBC were never made public was charged with supplying call centre services and hosting the data base from where the polling station results were remitted to the IEBC. Ken Call also has a contract with Uhuru Kenyatta's The National Alliance party to supply tallying services of results from polling stations!
"Results from Returning officers at polling stations being transmitted electronically were first relayed to Ken Call's servers for onward transmission to Bomas", an IEBC official told Weekly Citizen.
"Imagine the same server was being used to tally results for TNA! This is where the electronic tampering of results took place as it was easy to access the same server which was serving both the IEBC and TNA and managed by the same company. When questions started being raised about the contradiction between figures announced at polling stations and the ones on IEBC screens at Bomas, the system mysteriously crashed!"
The official says it is unclear when the company was hired by the IEBC and why the commission ignored the conflict of interest.
The official says it is unclear when the company was hired by the IEBC and why the commission ignored the conflict of interest.
The Weekly Citizen has discovered that like the Ghanaian case the plan by to rig the Kenyan Presidential vote was 3 pronged;
According to Maina Kiai, former chairman of the a human rights organization the technology was a red herring.
"This election was meant to be manual from start to finish loopholes included" he writes in his Saturday Nation column. "A manual result is what would allow different results to be announced at the Constituency, County and Bomas. All these electronic gadgets and equipment were meant to pull wool over our eyes"
"Even with this plan, the team knew they would have to top up numbers based as the 50% + 1 still proved elusive with a week to the election" says a TNA Mp Elect.
Then March 4[SUP]th[/SUP] came.
While the scheme was to "minimally" add votes to the "tyrannical numbers" toenable a Round One win, everything went wrong on March 4[SUP]th[/SUP] Election day as the electorate in key battle ground areas stunned Jubilee strategists with an anti Uhuru vote.
Luhyas expected to vote for Musalia up to 50% rebelled and went for Raila. The 30% of the Kamba vote expected from Kitui through Charity Ngilu failed to come in. Coast where Jubilee were expecting a 50-50 share with CORD bolted to Raila. CORD and Raila took off with 70% of the Kisii vote. In Kalenjin land, voter turnout fell below 70%. The "tyranny of numbers" was becoming a flop. With predictions by Jubilee statisticians collapsing all over on Election Day, the team after consultations had to quickly switch to Plan B.
"This plan was aided by the decision by the IEBC to keep open some polling stations well after 5pm, the official closing time" says an ODM Chief Agent who manned a County in Rift Valley. Plan B called for manual voting to improve the numbers. "In Rift Valley CORD agents were reportedly intimidated and some left the polling stations as die hard URP activists some of whom manned the polling centres now took over. "It was hard to control what they were doing after that. Some people were now being given 2-3 presidential ballots to get their target number. You had no idea who was voting and who wasn't."
As former Attorney General Amos Wako disclosed at a press conference last week "It appears the IEBC had several registers as they did not even gazette any. We will be asking the Supreme Court to examine which register was being used and which one was valid".
It is obvious CORD's petition will put IEBC to task show an increase in voter registration after the registration ended on 18th Dec. In some cases the register grew by 35% in one constituency after reconciliation. On December 18th 2012, @IEBCpage declared there were 14,337,399 Registered Voters. The Final Register indicates there were 13,352,533 Voters.
Other than manipulate the register using technology, technology was also becoming an obstacle to get the right numbers and ensure a Round 1 win. The Voter Identification Kit which required fingerprint identification for voters could not be manipulated as "ghost" voters could not get in to vote or double voters. They had to be physically present.
By 2pm, a crisis meeting was convened by Jubilee strategists on how to shore up numbers in Rift Valley.Mysteriously the Finger Print Identification kit stopped working. Manual voting was introduced.
The IEBC electronic tallying system which was relaying fast results with a 53% lead for Uhuru four hours after 5pm, suddenly slowed down with just a million votes in. Then the "IEBC" server which in reality belonged to Ken Call crashed. And the results slowed down to a trickle. By 11pm IEBC announced to the press that announcement of provisional results had been halted and pushed to Tuesday.
Most IT experts confirm that the amount of data being remitted for the 33,000 polling stations in terms of text messages could not have crashed the system.
"It is very little data. Safaricom, Airtel and Orange deal with almost 300 million text messages daily. The data from polling stations was not that much", says an employee of Safaricom on condition of anonymity. "What is puzzling is why on such an important exercise IEBC and Ken Call did not install the standard back-up server which would saved remitted results and revived the process".
The CORD team believes Isaack Hassan's explanations were a cover-up and that the technology "use" and "failure" were part of the strategy to rig the elections.
"The electronic system kept Uhuru and Raila at particular percentages to psychologically make Kenyans believe Uhuru was winning and Raila was losing. However since the figures at Bomas were not matching forms 34, 35, 36, and the Jubilee "tyranny of numbers" formula had failed, the electronic tallying system had to go.
Maina Kiai is more brutal in his assessment calling IEBC's excuses "hogwash". "First it was that the server crashed. Then, than one side of the disk was full and unable to accept results. Then that presiding officers were slow in transmitting. The maximum capacity required for data from 33,000 polling stations is just 2GB, less than what a mobile phone can take!"
With the plan in progress for manual voting, by Wednesday Rift Valley Turn-Out was being reported at 90% while Central had risen to 95%. Based on the Kriegler report this numbers were obviously inflated. However more was required as Uhuru had dropped below 50%. So delays had to be created for Returning Officers to re-adjust figures.
The diversionary tactic kept Kenyans patient as Issack Hassan kept talking of delays caused by "verification", "technological challenges" and introduced a phrase "complex elections" that would be repeatedly used throughout the Bomas process.
With the announcement that manual voting would be used, the vote tallying took a different outlook as the initial 48 hrs in which all provisional results were to be announced dragged into days and tallying began afresh. Questions about discrepancies by CORD officials resulted in IEBC throwing them out. A compliant media was threatened into silence and no criticism of the IEBC was to be aired.
The Bomas tallying centre was placed under heavy security as the once accessible Chairman of the IEBC now avoided all media questions regarding the process.
"This is the most opaque electoral commission and ranks lower than even the late Kivuitu Commission" said one of CORD's lawyers James Orengo.
In the deliberate confusion that followed strange results started flowing off the IBC press briefings. Among the cases are;
Wajir North had a 92% Voter Turn-Out for spot whose history indicates 50-60%. In Wajir West, if the Final Register hadn't been adjusted, 99.45% of the Registered Voters would have voted. In Nyaki East in North Imenti with 12000 registered voters 15300 are reported to have voted!
In Kajiado South, the people who voted (42,276) is higher than the people registered in Dec (41,040).Register adjusted to 46,218 to conform. In Sigor, the people who voted (19,704) is higher than the people registered in Dec (19,337).Register adjusted to 21,341 to conform.
"How does Turkana Central with 25,970 votes as at 18th Dec end up with 34,486 voters after reconciliation?! Where did 8,516 voters come from?" asks Dr Makodingo, a political analyst on his twitter page.
Worse still, IEBC's figures refuse to add up inspite of efforts to "correct errors". Valid Votes (12,222,980) plus Rejected Votes (108,975) add up to 12,331,955 and not their tally of 12,338,667!!
"It is strange that 1,500,000 persons only cast a vote for a president and across Kenya this number is reflected in joint votes cast for Senators, Governors, Mps, Women Reps or County Reps. It is an obvious case of manual ballot box stuffing and double voting for Uhuru" says Statistics analyst Dr Makodingo
Presently CORD may only have to prove that the 8,000 votes votes Uhuru received to add to his declared 50% is fraudulent. If that is done the Supreme Court can order a fresh poll within 60 days.
By now, most observers of Kenyan politics are aware that Raila Odinga and the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) have moved to the Supreme Court to seek redress. Instead of rehashing the grounds that Raila Odinga is challenging the declaration of Uhuru Kenyatta as the President Elect, it is easy to direct you to this link where you can read the petition in full.- First, encourage the purchase of BVR kits by the IEBC. The technology was simply meant to hoodwink the public and crash when plan B was to be effected. Using unorthodox means that included bribing IEBC officials, the more experienced 4G solutions which serves India that has over 500 million voters was disqualified and Code Inc given the job to supply the kits. Code Inc went into liquidation and was renamed Electoral Systems International after the Fijian government exposed the company to be a branch of the Canadian Intelligence Organisation. Part of the system's technology was supplied by a company linked to a Mr Chirchir, a former Commissioner at the IEBC
- Secondly, as Ghana's NPP claims in their petition, the ruling party used Super Lock Technologies Ltd to hack into the system and pre-determine a mathematical formula that adjusts figures as they come for both candidates while keeping any other candidates at a predetermined formula to ensure they do not harm the intended outcome. (This possibly explains why Uhuru's margins with Raila never changed even with random results coming from all over the country). Yet even with this plan, Jubilee knew they would have to top up "few" numbers based as the 50% + 1 was still proving elusive with a week to the election.
- The third and final strategy was the real plan. Play with Kenyans' minds by manipulating results and establishing a lead for Jubilee then crash the system and go manual. This was arranged by declining to have a back-up server which would retain evidence of the manipulation. With only one server, a deliberate crash would be final and would destroy evidence.
According to Maina Kiai, former chairman of the a human rights organization the technology was a red herring.
"This election was meant to be manual from start to finish loopholes included" he writes in his Saturday Nation column. "A manual result is what would allow different results to be announced at the Constituency, County and Bomas. All these electronic gadgets and equipment were meant to pull wool over our eyes"
"Even with this plan, the team knew they would have to top up numbers based as the 50% + 1 still proved elusive with a week to the election" says a TNA Mp Elect.
Then March 4[SUP]th[/SUP] came.
While the scheme was to "minimally" add votes to the "tyrannical numbers" toenable a Round One win, everything went wrong on March 4[SUP]th[/SUP] Election day as the electorate in key battle ground areas stunned Jubilee strategists with an anti Uhuru vote.
Luhyas expected to vote for Musalia up to 50% rebelled and went for Raila. The 30% of the Kamba vote expected from Kitui through Charity Ngilu failed to come in. Coast where Jubilee were expecting a 50-50 share with CORD bolted to Raila. CORD and Raila took off with 70% of the Kisii vote. In Kalenjin land, voter turnout fell below 70%. The "tyranny of numbers" was becoming a flop. With predictions by Jubilee statisticians collapsing all over on Election Day, the team after consultations had to quickly switch to Plan B.
"This plan was aided by the decision by the IEBC to keep open some polling stations well after 5pm, the official closing time" says an ODM Chief Agent who manned a County in Rift Valley. Plan B called for manual voting to improve the numbers. "In Rift Valley CORD agents were reportedly intimidated and some left the polling stations as die hard URP activists some of whom manned the polling centres now took over. "It was hard to control what they were doing after that. Some people were now being given 2-3 presidential ballots to get their target number. You had no idea who was voting and who wasn't."
As former Attorney General Amos Wako disclosed at a press conference last week "It appears the IEBC had several registers as they did not even gazette any. We will be asking the Supreme Court to examine which register was being used and which one was valid".
It is obvious CORD's petition will put IEBC to task show an increase in voter registration after the registration ended on 18th Dec. In some cases the register grew by 35% in one constituency after reconciliation. On December 18th 2012, @IEBCpage declared there were 14,337,399 Registered Voters. The Final Register indicates there were 13,352,533 Voters.
Other than manipulate the register using technology, technology was also becoming an obstacle to get the right numbers and ensure a Round 1 win. The Voter Identification Kit which required fingerprint identification for voters could not be manipulated as "ghost" voters could not get in to vote or double voters. They had to be physically present.
By 2pm, a crisis meeting was convened by Jubilee strategists on how to shore up numbers in Rift Valley.Mysteriously the Finger Print Identification kit stopped working. Manual voting was introduced.
The IEBC electronic tallying system which was relaying fast results with a 53% lead for Uhuru four hours after 5pm, suddenly slowed down with just a million votes in. Then the "IEBC" server which in reality belonged to Ken Call crashed. And the results slowed down to a trickle. By 11pm IEBC announced to the press that announcement of provisional results had been halted and pushed to Tuesday.
Most IT experts confirm that the amount of data being remitted for the 33,000 polling stations in terms of text messages could not have crashed the system.
"It is very little data. Safaricom, Airtel and Orange deal with almost 300 million text messages daily. The data from polling stations was not that much", says an employee of Safaricom on condition of anonymity. "What is puzzling is why on such an important exercise IEBC and Ken Call did not install the standard back-up server which would saved remitted results and revived the process".
The CORD team believes Isaack Hassan's explanations were a cover-up and that the technology "use" and "failure" were part of the strategy to rig the elections.
"The electronic system kept Uhuru and Raila at particular percentages to psychologically make Kenyans believe Uhuru was winning and Raila was losing. However since the figures at Bomas were not matching forms 34, 35, 36, and the Jubilee "tyranny of numbers" formula had failed, the electronic tallying system had to go.
Maina Kiai is more brutal in his assessment calling IEBC's excuses "hogwash". "First it was that the server crashed. Then, than one side of the disk was full and unable to accept results. Then that presiding officers were slow in transmitting. The maximum capacity required for data from 33,000 polling stations is just 2GB, less than what a mobile phone can take!"
With the plan in progress for manual voting, by Wednesday Rift Valley Turn-Out was being reported at 90% while Central had risen to 95%. Based on the Kriegler report this numbers were obviously inflated. However more was required as Uhuru had dropped below 50%. So delays had to be created for Returning Officers to re-adjust figures.
The diversionary tactic kept Kenyans patient as Issack Hassan kept talking of delays caused by "verification", "technological challenges" and introduced a phrase "complex elections" that would be repeatedly used throughout the Bomas process.
With the announcement that manual voting would be used, the vote tallying took a different outlook as the initial 48 hrs in which all provisional results were to be announced dragged into days and tallying began afresh. Questions about discrepancies by CORD officials resulted in IEBC throwing them out. A compliant media was threatened into silence and no criticism of the IEBC was to be aired.
The Bomas tallying centre was placed under heavy security as the once accessible Chairman of the IEBC now avoided all media questions regarding the process.
"This is the most opaque electoral commission and ranks lower than even the late Kivuitu Commission" said one of CORD's lawyers James Orengo.
In the deliberate confusion that followed strange results started flowing off the IBC press briefings. Among the cases are;
Wajir North had a 92% Voter Turn-Out for spot whose history indicates 50-60%. In Wajir West, if the Final Register hadn't been adjusted, 99.45% of the Registered Voters would have voted. In Nyaki East in North Imenti with 12000 registered voters 15300 are reported to have voted!
In Kajiado South, the people who voted (42,276) is higher than the people registered in Dec (41,040).Register adjusted to 46,218 to conform. In Sigor, the people who voted (19,704) is higher than the people registered in Dec (19,337).Register adjusted to 21,341 to conform.
"How does Turkana Central with 25,970 votes as at 18th Dec end up with 34,486 voters after reconciliation?! Where did 8,516 voters come from?" asks Dr Makodingo, a political analyst on his twitter page.
Worse still, IEBC's figures refuse to add up inspite of efforts to "correct errors". Valid Votes (12,222,980) plus Rejected Votes (108,975) add up to 12,331,955 and not their tally of 12,338,667!!
"It is strange that 1,500,000 persons only cast a vote for a president and across Kenya this number is reflected in joint votes cast for Senators, Governors, Mps, Women Reps or County Reps. It is an obvious case of manual ballot box stuffing and double voting for Uhuru" says Statistics analyst Dr Makodingo
Presently CORD may only have to prove that the 8,000 votes votes Uhuru received to add to his declared 50% is fraudulent. If that is done the Supreme Court can order a fresh poll within 60 days.
CORD supporters have set up the Democracy on Trial portal where you will find a lot of information.
Many friends of Kenya like the internationally respected Jamaica born, US-based revolutionary thinker and Pan Africanist, who was recently in the country have gone on the record in calling the March 4 elections and electoral fraud as you can see from this piece he did for the widely read Pambazuka online newsletter that reaches upwards of 500,000 readers every single week.
Peter Greste, blogging on the Al Jazeera site, is also demanding that election flaws need answers.
Mainstream publications have weighed in with their various takes on the putative, if contested Uhuru Presidency. That darling of Western policy wonks, Foreign Policy magazine, tags Mr. Kenyatta as
"Kenya's Most Wanted" even as it advises the United States that it must find a way to work with its East African ally, even if it's run by an accused perpetrator of crimes against humanity, in this piece by Suzzane Nosel.
The Economist, in its March 16th edition calls Mzee Jomo's son as a "chip off the old Kikuyu block" who must convince Kenyans that he is his own man.
The Atlantic argues that "the credibility of the vote won't come from technical soundness but from political goodwill" in their March 14th edition.
One can add that many PROGRESSIVE candidates did not make much headway, given the way Kenyan mainstream politics is dominated by money, tribalism and petty personality squabbles.
But returning to the Presidential, Parliamentary and County contests, let us ponder on the following special Kenya Gazette officially confirming who was elected on what party ticket across the country.
We have to mull over what it means when Kenyans, in six out of the eight former provinces voted overwhelmingly for Raila Odinga and the CORD team. What does this say about the moral and national legitimacy of Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto across Kenya. We still ruefully remember that the Jubilee celebrations took on an overtly ETHNIC tone largely restricted to the Gikuyu, Meru, Embu and Kalenjin strongholds of that alliance. What are the implications for national harmony and unity?
Gaddo, who comments editiorially through his cartoons for the Nation Media Group-the largest media house in the East and Central African region, had this offering:
It looks like the Uhuruto tag team are not wasting any time in getting their hands on the levers of state power. Mr. Kenyatta is already acting Presidential complete with his heavy duty security detail and outriders. A few days ago he got a high profile briefing from senior state bureaucrats on how to handle the transition to the highest office in the land.
Onyango Oloo
Nairobi, Kenya
Monday, March 18, 2013
9:52 PM (East African Standard Time)