Uhuru’s Jubilee party plans to contest results in 11 Mt Kenya counties
Jubilee Secretary General Jeremiah Kioni and Nyeri Town MP Ngunjiri Wambugu chats outside FK resorts in Nyeri County after a meeting with the party candidates on June 8, 2022. The two leaders lost the parliamentary seat race to UDA candidates.
What you need to know:
- Jubilee wants IEBC to give it full remote access to electronic devices which were used to transmit results to constituency tallying centres.
- The party also wants details of smartphones that were used by all Returning Officers and access to servers used at each constituency tallying centre.
Jubilee has written a 14-point letter to the electoral agency seeking information that would help the party launch petitions challenging poll results in races for governor, senator, woman rep, MP and ward rep in the Mt Kenya region.
The party said it will contest results in Tharaka Nithi, Meru, Laikipia, Nyeri, Kirinyaga, Embu, Murang’a, Kiambu, Nyandarua, Nairobi and Nakuru counties.
Secretary-general Jeremiah Kioni provided the letter to the Nation and claimed that Jubilee leaders, including its national leader, President Uhuru Kenyatta, are convinced that “our win in the Mt Kenya region was stolen”.
He said the leaders had ordered a comprehensive audit of the August 9 election and the party needs information from the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to launch its petitions.
The party had written to the IEBC, invoking Article 35 of the Constitution and Section 4 of the Access to Information Act No. 31 of 2016, he said.
Mr Kioni, a land economist and lawyer, added they are seeking data from the IEBC in order to protect the party and its members’ rights as enumerated under Article 38 of the Constitution.
Mr Kioni, 57, lost his Ndaragwa parliamentary seat to George Gachagua of the United Democratic Alliance (UDA), which eclipsed Jubilee in Mt Kenya. He garnered 7, 227 votes against the winner’s 30,180.
Jubilee wants the IEBC to provide a complete unedited soft copy of the register of voters per polling station that was used in the elections.
It also wants full remote access to electronic devices used to transmit results to constituency tallying centres, smartphones that were used by all returning officers and access to servers used at each constituency tallying centre.
“We also need certified copies of the raw images of forms prepared at and obtained from all the polling stations before they were converted to pdf format,” the letter says in its fifth and sixth demands.
“We also want the static IP address of each Kenya Integrated Election Management System (Kiems) kit used at each of the polling stations.”
Jubilee, which won only two parliamentary seats in Mt Kenya – Mr Kwenya Thuku (Kinangop) and David Kiaraho (Ol Kalou) – also wants the IEBC to provide specific GPS locations of each Kiems kit and those of each polling station used between and including August 5 and August 15.
Device identifiers
It also wants a certified list of all Kiems kits’ unique device identifiers, including the Media Access Control (MAC) address, International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) numbers, SIM cards and their numbers as they were procured (used, unused and/or deployed during the election).
Jubilee won 24 parliamentary seats against a target of more than 70, one governor seat (Isiolo) against its target of 16, two woman rep seats in Isiolo and Nyamira against a target of 16 and three Senate seats against a target of 16.
President Kenyatta, the Azimio la Umoja Kenya Kwanza Coalition Party’s chairman, wanted Mr Odinga to succeed him, but this was resoundingly rejected in favour of Dr William Ruto and his running mate Rigathi Gachagua.
Dr Ruto was declared President-elect on August 15 by IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati, who said he had garnered 50. 5 percent of the votes against Mr Odinga’s 48.9 percent.
Claiming Jubilee was rigged out in its former Mt Kenya stronghold, the party is demanding the electronic voter identification logs of each Kiems kit used at polling stations and constituency tallying centres.
It also wants the count of voters identified by Kiems kits at all polling stations by biometric data, alphanumeric search, manual register, and the overall count that includes voters found and those not found.
The party also wants the IEBC to provide Kiems kit logs, including login details of the users, opening and closing time, voters’ identification numbers, the device MAC addresses, the mode of identification, timestamp, and codes of polling stations.
Mr Kioni had on Wednesday claimed that at some Mt Kenya polling stations, “voting happened during the dead of night like is the practice in witchcraft”.
He also claimed that “all senior IEBC officials wore face masks to conceal their lips and stifle their voices as they influenced voters in the polling booths to vote out Jubilee contestants”.
He said the party will not relent in its search for the truth.
“We also demand all form 32As relating to voter identification and verification, all forms 34As, 35As, 36As, 37As, 38As and 39As as well as all forms 33 relating to candidates' votes tally sheets,” the letter says.
Mr Kioni said “this is in pursuit of our right to information held by the state in order to safeguard and ascertain our fundamental rights to free, fair and transparent elections”.
