Sam Kiplagat
28 August 2008
Nairobi — The man who was in charge of the national tallying centre during last year's General Election has denied exerting pressure on returning officers to deliver partial results from constituencies.
Mr Suleiman Chege told the Independent Review Commisssion- led by Judge Kriegler- that many partial results had errors and such mistakes could be avoided by doing away with the requirement.
His evidence, however, contradicted that of an earlier witness, Agnes Kisero, who testified in camera and several returning officers who said they were under pressure to relay partial results to the national tally centre stationed at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre (KICC).
According to ODM lawyer Tom Kajwang', Ms Kisero claimed that Chege exerted pressure upon her to get provisional results from returning officers. Ms Kisero, who was in charge of 21 constituencies in Central province, in turn kept calling the returning officers asking for results.
Mr Chege denied the allegations but admitted that the partial results led to many errors.
"It should be banned and should not be accepted in future."
Mr Chege, the Electoral Commission of Kenya deputy secretary, further told the commission that computers used in tallying presidential results were programmed to reject results that showed 100 per cent voter turnout.
He gave examples of Maragwa and Bondo constituencies where there were 115 and 100.5 per cent voter turnout respectively.
The official said both returning officers were summoned to KICC for explanation. In the Maragwa case, it emerged that the returning officer had made a double entry from a polling station.
He suggested that electoral laws should be changed to allow party agents, observers and the media to take part in the tallying of presidential votes.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 The Nation. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
