allAfrica.com: Kenya: Election Fraud Whistle Blower On the Run (Page 1 of 2)

A team has been sworn-in to look at how the Electoral Commission of Kenya handled the General Election last year.

As the team gets down to business, one man remains on the run for having blown the whistle on breach of rules during the tallying of presidential results.

Mr Kipkemoi arap Kirui became a marked man immediately he addressed a press conference.

On December 27, last year, shortly before the presidential poll results were announced, one man -whose actions could either be described as courageous or sheer foolishness - came out in the full glare of local and international media.

He confessed anomalies were taking place at ECK offices at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre, Nairobi.

But immediately he addressed a press conference, Mr Kipkemoi arap Kirui became a marked man. Tension was high, nobody trusted the other and as fast as he came into the limelight, he disappeared.

What followed after were events akin to a James Bond movie.

In his address to the world, Kirui said: "I am speaking to the people of Kenya. My conscience would not allow me to see what I have seen and not speak about it. ECK is responsible for this mess. They (results) are altered here, not in the field. Form 16A is sufficient."

Kirui had been mandated with tallying the results on Form 16A brought by returning officers while the Information Technology section would key-in changes for confirmation and signing by tallying officers.

"I did it for the first time but could not proceed to the second constituency because of shameless, blatant, open alteration of documents presented by the returning officers. My conscience would not allow me to sit and keep quiet," Kirui explained.

He added: "I have gone public because it is important to do so. . .for heaven's sake let us have a fair tallying process."

Kirui says of his action then: "It mattered to me that my coming out would make a difference and I am convinced that it did. When I went to KICC to address the press, the situation was already tense; the paramilitary police had surrounded the place. I was sure a bullet would go through my head any time."

Kirui then believed his intervention would save the situation. He thought the ECK Chairman, Mr Samuel Kivuitu, would nullify the elections and order a recount.

"I was convinced some action would be taken but little did I know that President Mwai Kibaki was preparing to be sworn in at the same time," he recalls.

As a tallying supervisor, Kirui was responsible for the vote tallying process for one of 10 regions comprising 21 constituencies. This involved supervising junior staff who were meant to be in direct contact with returning officers at the constituency level, to receive and tally poll results by phone, verify them via faxed copies of original documents and finally confirm them by receiving the actual physical copies of original documents (Form 16A) countersigned by presiding officers and polling agents at the polling stations before the results could be announced by the commission chairman.

No verification

What transpired, however, was total confusion - a breach of the laid down procedures. Kirui says there was complete disregard for verification and proper and accurate documentation of the results. There was deliberate manipulation of the entire process, says Kirui.

He says none of the tallying and data entry officials recruited by the Electoral Commission of Kenya received adequate training on how to handle the exercise.

He argues the recruitment exercise continued to the very last minute. People were literally being recruited from the streets.

"They had school leavers from the streets joining the ECK tallying teams. I thought it was questionable, not because they didn't know what to do but because they came very late, totally untrained and unprepared. We were then, as team leaders, asked to train people yet we didn't receive any training ourselves."

Kirui feels that the Independent Review Committee into the conduct of the elections should focus on structural weaknesses in the ECK that led to such a high level of incompetence.

"The level of incompetence could be seen right from the junior officers picked from the streets and put to do the job right away -seeing the forms and documents for the first time, without any training - to the highest officials and supervisors who seemed not to understand their roles and duties," he explains.

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