The Supreme Court determines whether or not President Uhuru was validly reelected tomorrow. Uhuru may serve a second term or a fresh election will be held in 60 days.
The results televised at the close of the poll on August 8 may not have been accompanied by Forms 34A and 34B. IEBC lawyer Paul Nyamodi said that those results were final, contradicting the IEBC’s Wafula Chebukati’s assurances to Raila Odinga’s agents at Bomas that the same were provisional.
IEBC and Uhuru’s legal teams maintained that these were statistics not data, and that results were those presented in IEBC’s portal and forms. The Court will determine whether the Court of Appeal decision on finality of results declared at polling stations and compiled by Constituency Returning Officers was followed.
The IEBC is alleged to have relied on those results to create a false impression that Raila lost with a constant 11% margin. It was his case that the IEBC announced Uhuru as winner without Forms 34A and 34B, amounting to over 3.5 million votes, and generated the forms later. The issue will be whether the announcement in those circumstances was lawful.
The IEBC and Uhuru said more than 500,000 people voted for President and not Governor, Senator and Woman Representative. One can lawfully vote for President alone and that a majority of the votes in issue came from prisons and the diaspora.
The claim of one voting for President alone troubled the Court, as there was no credible explanation or account of the rest of the 5 ballot papers issued to a voter. Total registered voters from prisons and diaspora do not exceed 10,000. It will be interesting to see how the Court resolves the issue.
A scrutiny of Forms 34B disclosed 56 did not have watermarks whilst 31 did not have serial numbers. Raila claimed that these were forgeries. IEBC’s lawyer Paul Muite submitted that there was no requirement for watermarks or serial numbers. His statement that some forms bore watermarks and serial numbers out of abundant caution could not explain why the rest did not. The Returning Officers’ failure to sign 5 forms was attributed to human error. What will be the fate of the votes in these forms?
Interference with the IEBC servers and results was disclosed in the report by the Court. What the Court makes of the same will impact the decision.