92 polls officers picked in my absence, says Kivuitu

Ninety two returning officers were appointed at the eleventh hour during the 2007 elections, a thing former Electoral Commission Kenya chairman Samuel Kivuitu says was a “serious” mistake.

In an interview on Wednesday, Mr Kivuitu said the 92 were mainly appointed as deputy returning officers and lacked necessary qualifications.

“They were not trained like others. Some were not gazetted. This is a serious mistake that I discovered late,” Mr Kivuitu said, adding that he was sick when the appointments were done and that he was embarrassed when he noted it later.

It was a requirement that one should have presided over an elections before to be appointed returning officer in 2007 elections but only a few of the 92 had done it, Mr Kivuitu said.

During an interview with NTV at his Nairobi home, he admitted that there were several anomalies in the elections as per the Kriegler report.

Changed tally

In Limuru, a returning officer brought the results to Kenyatta International Conference Centre before disappearing and ignoring phone calls, he said, adding “the case was the same in many other places.”

In Molo, the results were changed three times and Juja (twice), he said and named Kieni as another affected area where the presidential tally was changed upwards.

“When I saw the difference I said I will get the explanation from the returning officers to know whether the elections were free and fair,” he said, adding that there was nothing much he could do since after announcing the results he became a spectator and that the matters could only be solved in the courts.

The Kieni returning officer, Mr Kivuitu said, told him he entered the right figure in the computer but it was changed.

Mr Kivuitu said there was double voting in some polling stations in Central, Meru, Embu, Nyanza and Ukambani.

The former chairman, who served ECK for 16 years, said there were no PNU agents in Luo Nyanza because the party made a “silly” mistake of deploying Administration policemen. Some of the APs were killed.

In Central and Rift Valley, he added, there was also poor representation of agents.

Mr Kivuitu said only three commissioners were experienced to handle the elections after a majority were replaced in the run-up to the elections.

He said he was not against the disbandment of ECK, but the manner in which it was done. “The commissioners should have faced a tribunal,” he said.