Nasa: Terms for accepting outcome of presidential polls

The opposition National Super Alliance (Nasa) has said that the presidential election results must be announced at the constituency level otherwise there will be no election.

Speaking in Mombasa, the coalition's steering panel co-chairs - James Orengo and Senator Johnson Muthama (Machakos) - said that a High Court ruling that results be announced at the polling stations should be effected.

The opposition restated its position as the Court of Appeal is expected to hear the case where the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) wants an appeal challenging the announcement of presidential results from the constituency level as final be determined as a matter of urgency.

COURT'S DECISION
On April 7, High Court judges Aggrey Muchelule, Weldon Korir and Enoch Chacha Mwita, declared that the presidential results at the constituency level as announced by returning officers are final and should therefore not be subjected to any alterations by the IEBC at the national tallying centre.

The verdict had indicated lower possibility of altering the presidential election results at the national tallying centre after being submitted by the 290 constituencies in general elections.

However, the electoral agency terms the High Court verdict as an error and wants it set aside.

In the appeal filed on April 21, IEBC faulted the judges for failing to distinguish between announcement of poll results by returning officers of various electoral units and the declaration of the presidential election results by the chairman of the commission.

"In arriving at the entirety of the decision, the learned judges erred in law and in fact in disregarding all laws relating to the conduct of and declaration of presidential election results," Mr Wambua Kilonzo, IEBC's lawyer, argued.

ILLEGAL
IEBC says that the judges failed to distinguish the fact that returning officers are limited to only announcing results at the constituencies while the Commission’s chair, currently Wafula Chebukati, has the mandate of declaring total votes of each presidential candidate.

The commission also says that granting returning officers power to declare presidential results is contrary to the provisions of the law.

In the case documents, it further argued that matters presented in the case did not relate to the validity of the conduct of presidential elections, hence the three-judge bench misdirected themselves.

Speaking at the Moi International Airport in Mombasa, the Nasa team condemned IEBC’s appeal against the ruling alleging it is a plan to rig the elections.

NASA WILL WIN

Asked if they will boycott, Mr Muthama said: "We will not boycott elections. There will simply be no election."

Nasa, during deliberations among the five Nasa principals at Vipingo Ridge in Kilifi County today, said voters figures from various parts of the country have revealed that the coalition will win the August 8 elections.

Mr Giles said: "It concerns us as Nasa that the IEBC has decided to appeal the decision. In whose interest is this appeal made?

"As Nasa we would like to make it very clear that if the IEBC continues with this mischief we will not participate in the election of 2017."

They demanded the withdrawal of the appeal forthwith.

STEALING VOTES
They also demanded: the adoption of an open and transparent process of deploying constituency returning officers and the subjection of Electronic Voter Identification kits to public inspection to confirm their suitability.

This is because the importation of the kits was done without being subjected to pre-export verification, they argued.

"We also demand that these EVID kits be used in the forthcoming voter verification exercise and are deployed and distributed to all polling stations for purposes of supplementing the voter verification exercise," they said.

On the illegality of some positions of the Pentagon members, Mr Orengo dismissed it as inconsequential.

"The position of Chief of Staff and Head of Public Service in the Jubilee government is not in the constitution. Likewise, our positions are our in-house arrangement and have nothing to do with the constitution."

"Our experts and laws looked and re-looked the entire thing and there is nothing illegal about it," he said.

CAMPAIGNS
All the five principals (Raila Odinga, ODM; Moses Wetang'ula, Ford-Kenya; Musalia Mudavadi, ANC; Kalonzo Musyoka, Wiper; and Isaac Ruto, CCM) attended the Kilifi retreat.

The outfit’s first major rally, Mr Muthama said, will be in Nakuru soon.

A timetable for the rallies will be released before the end of the week.

"We will conduct campaign rallies that have never been witnessed before in this country," he said.

In a rebuttal, Nyeri Town constituency Jubilee candidate Ngunjiri Wambugu said that Nasa's warning over the announcing of the presidential results amounts to a war cry and interference with the independence of the Judiciary.

He asked Nasa to let the courts decide instead of making demands.

"When the court ruled in their (Nasa) advantage, we did not object or threaten the country.

"So what makes Nasa so special than everyone else? Let them give courts time and space to make independent decisions," Mr Wambugu, who is also Jubilee's political strategist, said.

IEBC'S MANDATE

The General Elections Regulations 83(4) state that the results of the presidential election in a constituency shown in Form 34 (the results declared by the constituency returning officers) shall be subject to confirmation by the commission after a tally of all votes cast in the election was also declared as contrary to the constitution.

IEBC had argued that it has the mandate to audit the presidential election results, approve or disapprove and check for errors after receiving them from returning officers.