KHALWALE IN TROUBLE

Tallying of votes in Ikolomani constituency had discrepancies which affected the outcome, an election court heard on Thursday.

Witness Brahim Songwa said he reached this conclusion after analysing the results obtained by polling agents and compared them with entries made in Form 16A and Form 17A.

He said he had been approached by petitioner Bernard Shinali, who contested the seat on a Liberal Democratic Movement party ticket, to analyse the results from 63 stations and establish if they were genuine.

Mr Songwa told Mr Justice Isaac Lenaola, sitting in Kakamega, that a report he had compiled reflected the errors he detected in the tallying of votes.

He said as part of the investigation, he visited the Electoral Commission of Kenya offices in Nairobi and Kakamega after the December 27, 2007, polls to obtain copies of the results for polling stations in Ikolomani but his request was turned down.

“I then decided to gather the information using reports from party agents representing the candidates and discovered that what they had recorded was different from what was reflected in some of the Forms 16A and Form 17A,” he said.

Mr Songwa, an accountant, said on computing the vote tally, he came up with different figures from those recorded in Form 16A. He said the returning officer found MP Boni Khalwale had 8,386 votes while Mr Shinali had 8,121.

Not impartial

“After scrutinising the figures, I came up with different tallies for both the MP and the petitioner and formed the opinion that something was wrong,” he said.

He said that in some cases, votes meant for the petitioner were wrongfully added to increase Dr Khalwale’s.

He admitted that his report was not impartial as he had largely relied on information from poll agents representing Mr Shinali and other candidates.

Mr Songwa, who was cross-examined by a lawyer representing Dr Khalwale, denied he was related to the petitioner’s wife and had been his agent in Kanu grassroots elections in Ikolomani in 2005.