Yesterday, Samuel Kivuitu, the Electoral Commission of Kenya's
chairman (who seems like a Kibaki pawn now) went on TV and reported
that 51 out of 210 constituencies had yet to report their results to
the ECK in Nairobi. This seemed very suspicious, since this was almost
two days after the close of the polls. While some of these
constituencies were in the distant Northeast and Coast provinces, what
made it most suspicious was that many of these places were in Central
and Nairobi, where it should not have taken days to get the results to
Kenyan International Conference Center (KICC) where ECK operated. Kivuitu said that he "didn't know what sort of cooking was going
on" and said that many of the commission's agents, called returning
officers, in these areas "had their cellphones switched off." He
issued some vague threats, read the results they had in hand, and went
off the air.
Later yesterday, they came back on to continue reading more
results. After a few of these results were read, ODM interrupted the
news conference, claiming that the numbers being read did not match
those that were read at the constituency level. In particular, Kibaki
got 95,000 votes in a single constituency, Juja, which had earlier been
reported as 55,000 on the ground, and by the media. (Raila later
claimed that this total was inflated to 76,000 between Juja and KICC,
and then to 95,000 at KICC.) ODM demanded an audit of the results, and
Kivuitu agreed, suspending the announcement of results, and allowing
two representatives from each party to join the commission in the audit
of the results. There were, according to ODM, many other numbers which
did not match, but Juja stood out for the size of the inflation.
This morning, Raila called a news conference and demanded a
full recount of the election results. He was calling PNU's bluff, as
they had threatened to demand a full recount when ODM first raised
objections. We are pretty sure he meant that he wanted a transparent
tallying of the constituency results, though it was somewhat unclear.
It would have been unrealistic to count the ballots again, especially
since they could have been tampered with easier than the tally sheets,
which were signed by witnesses from each party, with copies given to
each of the witnesses. ECK was supposed to hold a news conference a
few minutes after Raila finished, and I suspect he called his news
conference to forestall the announcement of a Kibaki victory, though I
have no solid evidence for this.
ECK did not come onstage at 10:30am as they had promised, (I
suspect they were debating how to respond to Raila's demand), and we
all sat in anticipation until 1 o'clock, when ODM took the stage at
KICC to announce that they had uncovered 48 constituencies lacking the
proper paperwork in the overnight audit of the ECK files at KICC. In
particular, a form called 16A was missing in all of these cases, which
was the form with results and the parties' witness signatures. They detailed some of the inflated numbers (i.e. the difference between the numbers announced at the constituency and by the ECK.) Almost
all of the constituencies were Kibaki strongholds in Central and
Eastern provinces, as well as a few in Rift Valley and Coast. ODM said
they were flying in these 16A forms from around the country, and called
for ECK to wait until these forms could be collected, before announcing
the results.
The ECK took the stage at KICC to announce the results around
4pm this afternoon. From the time they took the stage it was clear
that they did not intend to address the issues raised by ODM. Kivuitu
responded to ODM interruptions by telling them that their complaints
were outside his purview, and that they needed to take up the issues in
the courts. Raila had previously rejected this option, as the courts are controlled by Kibaki. Previous election challenges have been thrown out on ridiculous technicalities, for example, in 1997, because the challenge was not served in person to the president. Someone yelled out "We want justice!" and "This is not a
police state!" and after chaos broke out, ODM departed the room, and
Kivuitu and ECK were led out of the room. Soon thereafter, ODM
returned to the stage, this time with a member of the ECK in tow, who
attested to witnessing the doctoring of results. The ECK member was
obviously nervous, but produced the names of several provinces in
Eastern and Coast (the areas he was working on), which had inflated
results for Kibaki.
A few minutes later the military began clearing KICC of
civilians and media. About twenty minutes after that, Kivuitu came on
KBC, the government news station, and announced Kibaki as the winner of
the election. It took less than an hour for Kibaki to convene about a
hundred people at the State House to witness the swearing-in ceremony. (In 2002 the swearing-in was jubilantly attended by millions of people in the biggest park in Nairobi, several days after the announcement of the results.)
About thirty minutes later the news was interrupted by a directive
ordering a halt to all live broadcasts. The station was talking to a
reporter in Kisumu who was witnessing a large crowd marching toward
the police station in the middle of town, where police were waiting in
lories. He was describing the police assault on the crowd as
ineffective, due to its size, when he was cutoff by the studio. Earlier
in the broadcast they had cut away from a Raila news conference before
it started.
I'm sorry I cannot provide more details, but I do not know
the names of Kenyan localities well enough to remember all of what was
read. Please pass this along to interested parties.
January 1 update:
Tonight Kivuitu appeared on TV, interviewed by the national news. He said he was under great pressure from PNU, and their ally, ODM-Kenya (distinct from ODM) to announce the election results. He seemed to be apologizing for his role in this crisis, and claimed that he did not have the authority to suspend the announcement in order to investigate the claims.
Also today four ECK commissioners came forward to join the one that had come forward earlier, claiming to have concerns about vote-rigging in favor of the president inside KICC. Not only does it seem that the election was rigged in favor of the president, but the method was disturbingly "transparent." The EU observers have named two constituencies that had more than 20,000 votes added to their total at KICC, and claimed to have some evidence of many more. They also said that there were irregularities and evidence of rigging at a number of other levels.
Although the national news stations showed a bias towards Kibaki before the election, and during the initial stages of vote counting, it seems that they have turned on him. They are reporting on all of the above stories. It is hard to see how this sort of information can be widely disbursed in the country without leading people to conclude the election was stolen. As such, a political compromise must be negotiated before people will be willing to accept the new government, and stop the violence.
http://www.eastandard.net/news/?id=1143979833
http://www.eastandard.net/news/?id=1143979838
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7166590.stm