ORDERS FROM ABOVE

Electoral malpractices tailored to ensure President Kibaki’s victory in the last General Election were used in his Central Kenya strongholds, where officials had conspired to ensure many voters cast the ballot.

Officials had bent rules to ensure ‘their man’ retained the seat despite strong opposition he faced to get the second term.

And as noted by the Independent Review Commission that looked into the disputed 2007 polls, conduct was incredibly below quality.

The requirement that voters produce original identification documents was disregarded to ensure as many people as possible cast their votes to benefit Kibaki.

A senior election official at a constituency in Nyeri told The Standard on Sunday there was ‘a push from above’ to ensure many people were allowed to vote.

The source, who sought anonymity, said he was at one point reprimanded by his senior for turning away voters who did not have original national identity cards.

Trouble for official

He said he had urged clerks at Temple Road Primary School not to allow voters who did not have the documents to cast their votes. He said the voters had either a photocopy of the ID or police abstract indicating they had lost the same, which were not officially recognised.

"The requirement was that a voter had to produce the document, or at least a passport. That is why I insisted, despite pressure. I did not know I was courting trouble for being diligent," he said.

The secondary school teacher said after a short while, his senior came fuming and asking why he wanted to ‘throw away’ crucial votes on such flimsy grounds.

"He menacingly demanded to know why I was turning away kura za mzee (Kibaki’s votes) by not allowing the voters to face the ballot. He urged the clerks to ensure those I had turned away had voted, saying anyone who did not meet the requirements should be referred to him," said the official.

The teacher said he was shocked that his senior had chosen to reprimand him in the open when he knew what he was doing amounted to a malpractice, more especially having taken oath to ensure integrity of the elections.

Other malpractices included the extension of voting hours to allow as many people as possible to vote. While stations were to be closed at 5pm, some were opened as late as 7pm. Agents were sent to fetch people from their homes to cast their ballots.

An incident in Thika baffled many. Some agents went to fetch a mentally ill woman to cast a vote for Kibaki.

Huge disparities

"She of course did not know what was happening and was shouting as other people filled in her ballot to vote for Kibaki," said Claire Wairimu, who witnessed the incident. Also baffling many, and betraying the conduct of the elections, is how in some constituencies, Kibaki garnered more than the combined votes of all parliamentary candidates.

In Maragua constituency for example, he got in excess of 56,000 votes, whereas the combined votes for all the ten candidates, including the spoilt ones, were slightly over 51,000.

"The theory advanced by some people that there were voters who opted to only cast the presidential votes and declined parliamentary and civic cannot hold as cases had huge disparities," said a voter David Ngige.

He added: "This indicated there could either have been cases where presidential ballots were stashed in ballot boxes or election forms deliberately altered to give wrong results."

Delays in dispatching the presidential results from the region heightened fears rigging was taking place, prompting the former ECK chairman Samuel Kivuitu to wonder if his officials were ‘cooking results’.