Oraro: Votes for Raila were reduced

Senior Counsel George Oraro makes his submission at the Supreme Court in Nairobi. His client, Prime Minister RailaOdinga, wants the court to nullify the declaration by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission of Uhuru Kenyatta as President-elect. [PHOTO: EVANS HABIL/STANDARD]

By Felix Olick

NAIROBI; KENYA: Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s lawyer on Thursday concluded his oral submissions at the Supreme Court insisting that the 2013 elections were poorly conducted and contravened the law.

Senior counsel George Oraro hinged his argument on the evidence of results reflected on Forms 34 and 36 presented by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) as evidence.

Through Oraro, Raila pointed out that from the forms it was clear Uhuru’s votes were intentionally inflated while those of Raila were reduced in an apparent trend to ‘meet a given threshold’.

Oraro said it was clear that over 11,000 votes cast in favour of Raila were deducted while at the same time increasing Uhuru’s votes by 7,215. “Such errors in transferring information from one form to another suggest that there was a threshold to be met,” Oraro said.

“And somebody somewhere contrived to ensure that the threshold was met,” he added. He said a scrutiny of the forms indicated that Uhuru’s votes were inflated in transfer of information from Forms 34 to 36 and also the final presidential tally published by IEBC.

Forms 34 are declarations of results in respect of a polling centre for the presidential election.  The document also details the total number of registered voters at the polling station, valid votes cast, number cast in favour of each candidate, and rejected and disputed votes.

Dropped system

However, Form 36 is a declaration of the aggregate tally from a constituency and county. Oraro also complained that IEBC deliberately dropped the electronic voter transmission system as required by the Constitution, adding that political party agents were also thrown out of the tallying centre.

Quoting Regulation 85 of the Election Act, Oraro maintained that authorised political party agents are allowed by law to access the tallying centre, but IEBC resorted to what he termed as unilateral tallying. The counsel said according to instructions to returning officers contained in the poll books, electronic transmission of results is mandatory.