US envoy opposed repeat of poll - Wikileaks

By Beauttah OmangaUS Ambassador to Kenya Michael Ranneberger was against a repeat poll after the 2007 disputed presidential election results were announced.
According to the whistleblower website Wikileaks, this was because the envoy did not have faith in the defunct Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK).
The Wikileaks also quote Mr Ranneberger saying he never thought it would ever be possible to tell who actually won the presidential election.
"This is due in part to compromised election officials and election-related ballots and forms, but also because our estimated number of ‘ghost votes’ (stuffed ballots) from both sides easily exceeded President Kibaki’s margin of victory’ he stated.
It was his view that there was no need for an audit of the election results arguing that the exercise would not resolve the problem as it were then.
"Even if an honest audit could be conducted, the results might be so close as to fuel further and unrest. Another implication is that holding a run-off election might have likewise resulted in a very close race. After what happened during this election, Kenya’s electoral institutions can’t credibly conduct a free, fair, and transparent election until fundamental reform has been carried out," said Ranneberger.
He said then observers were still lost many days after the election results were declared on who actually won between President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga.
Massive rigging
The ambassador concluded that their investigations showed massive rigging.
"When we looked at any and all available data to try to answer that question, we found evidence of rigging and confirmation that some of the rigging took place inside ECK headquarters itself. By analysing various datasets (available on request), we developed scenarios that could point to either a Kibaki or a Raila victory," he wrote.
The envoy, Wikileaks indicates, attributed the rigging of the elections to major irregularities in the way constituency vote tallies were received, verified and reported by the ECK in Nairobi between December 28 and December 30.
He claimed there appeared little doubt that the cheating that took place at that level was done so exclusively by PNU partisans in Kibaki’s favour.
"There was cheating at the constituency level by ODM and PNU. An interesting question arises: Numerically, did this unprecedented form of central-level, 11th hour cheating in fact make the difference in who won and who lost?
Doctored results
In other words, taking into account all the data available, was the cheating that occurred at KICC significant enough numerically to provide the margin of victory for Kibaki? The answer has important implications for how the current crisis might be resolved," read the cable.
The envoy questioned discrepancies between the votes cast for presidential and parliamentary in certain constituencies.
"In Kenya, it is very unlikely that a voter would cast a presidential ballot and not a parliamentary one. Yet there were significant discrepancies in six of eight provinces between votes cast for parliament versus those cast for president," he said.
Ranneberger said the discrepancies totalled 459,100 votes, or 4.6 per cent of all votes cast, dwarfing Kibaki’s margin of victory (230,478 votes, or 2.3 per cent of all votes cast).
"It is impossible to conclude definitely how many of these ‘ghost votes’ went to each candidate, but the margin of uncertainty these extra votes create easily exceeds Kibaki’s margin of victory," said the envoy.
He added: "Significant discrepancies would indicate that the results were doctored enroute to, or after arriving in Nairobi, as per the claims of ODM and others."