4 IEBC commissioners claim Chebukati did not give them access to portal backend

Four runaway IEBC commissioners who disowned the presidential election results now claim that the State agency’s Chairman Wafula Chebukati had sole access to the portal backend where the final tally was being conducted.

The four, Juliana Cherera (Vice Chairperson), Francis Wanderi, Justus Nyang’aya and Irene Masit, made the revelations during a press address at a Nairobi hotel on Tuesday.

According to the quartet, Chebukati only presented them with the final presidential election results presumably from the backend which he controlled alone and did not allow them to even discuss them.

They now say this is an illegality, seemingly pointing towards foul play on Chebukati’s part on the final results that were released to the public at the Bomas of Kenya on Monday evening.

“The tallying that was being done by our technical staff was not known to the commissioners until around 4:30pm when Chebukati brought the results tabulated. He did not give us an opportunity to discuss the results…he just said ‘these are the results of each particular candidate’ and therefore he is going to read them. He did not allow us to discuss to see whether there were any disparities, in accordance with legal requirements,” said commissioner Wanderi.

“We announced results from several constituencies, all the members of the commission, and once that was done it was going to the backend. What we’re saying is that that backend was the privacy of Chebukati, not the rest of the commissioners. It would have required for him to bring that backend analysis to the plenary to discuss and look at the results, evaluate and see what has been done at the backend; that is simple.”

Ms. Cherera, on her part, despite acknowledging that the commission conducted the 2022 General Election with precision, disowned the results announced by Chebukati citing the ‘opaqueness’ with which she claimed the final tallying was done.

She reiterated Mr. Wanderi’s remarks saying the other IEBC commissioners were kept in the dark over the final results, up until almost the last minute when they were presented with them and decided to walk out.

““We have conducted the election and we did it to the best, we have improved in the processes as IEBC. We have upped the bar, we have considered the stages and processes that are supposed to be taken care of, but come to the last phase, the tallying phase, there was opaqueness. Things were not being shown to the public,” said Ms. Cherera.

“At Bomas, the screens were supposed to show cumulative numbers of the presidential candidates’ votes as they garnered and as we continued to read the results…the same was not displayed to the public, and the same was not given to commissioners."

She further added: "Just like the public was not aware, the commissioners were not aware of the cumulative results as the day went by. Two days to the end, it was not given out, so you could not clearly say that we have tallied 10 million, and this is how it is distributed.”