IEBC had no principal poll register - Oraro

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27, 2013 - 00:00 -- BY STAR REPORTER

The Independent Electoral Boundaries Commission has been put on the spot for its handling of the voter registration process last October in preparation for the March 4th elections.

Senior counsel George Oraro appearing for the Cord coalition in the petition challenging IEBC’s declaration of Uhuru Kenyatta as the president-elect from the polls has accused the IEBC of acting unconstitutionally during and after the compilation of the voter register.

He said that the irregularities surrounding the voter register, if looked into, would have denied Kenyatta the constitutional threshold of 50 per cent plus one that is required to declare a winner in the presidential race.

Oraro submitted that it is because of the poor handling of the register that tallying irregularities are being debated at the Supreme Court. Oraro read from the minutes of an alleged meeting that the IEBC commissioners had to discuss and amend the voter register on March 23 even after having announced that the voter register had been officially closed on March 18.

The counsel pointed out that this was a contravention of the law as the commission was obliged under law not to compile any other registers 14 days to the elections. Oraro also took issue with an alleged parallel voter register the IEBC compiled in the run-up to the election.

He said that the IEBC had a special register of some 31,318 people not captured on the biometric voter registration (BVR).He questioned why this figure was later inflated to 36,000 people and why when questioned about the high voter turnout in some polling stations, IEBC invoked the special register yet the numbers did not match.

“The voter turnout in some areas can only equate to communist states,” Oraro said adding that in places where the BVR kit failed is where manipulation of voters came up.

Oraro also alleged that the IEBC on account of poor handling of the voter registration process could not produce a principal register that would tell the total number of voters in the country. The court granted Oraro his request to continue with his submission tomorrow morning. The trial resumes tomorrow at 9am.