Jubilee's 290 lawyers to guard Uhuru Kenyatta's votes

President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Deputy William Ruto (right) address wananchi at Karatina during a campaign rally on October 15, 2017. Jubilee Party has hired lawyers and IT experts to help monitor vote tallying and transmission in the October 26 presidential election. PHOTO | JOSEPH KANYI | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Jubilee wants to ensure results transmission is above board.

  • The party will train agents to identify Forms 34A, what it should have, where it should be stamped, what security features it should have and who should sign it.

President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Jubilee Party will hire 290 lawyers and deploy them to constituency tallying centres in an elaborate plan they say will right the wrongs identified by the Supreme Court.

The lawyers will be required to follow through the results transmission process in the October 26 repeat presidential election, after the August 8 poll was annulled by the apex court on what it said were irregularities and illegalities.

NO MISTAKES

“We are putting our systems right to ensure that the mistakes the Supreme Court said happened do not recur, and having lawyers at the constituencies will help us arrest the problem before it occurs,” Jubilee Party Executive Director Winnie Guchu told the Nation in an interview.

The lawyers will report to an elected Jubilee Party MP or one who was a candidate and lost the August 8 polls and who will act as President Kenyatta’s chief agent at the constituencies.

The chief agent will also be in charge of an information technology expert and an elections expert.

“We are not taking anything to chance,” said Ms Guchu, who is also President Kenyatta’s deputy chief agent.

ABOVE BOARD

The IT professional, Ms Guchu said, will work with the lawyer in ensuring that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) transmission of results is above board.

By the end of today, 1,160 trainers of trainers will have been trained at the Multimedia University.

The 1,160 will tutor 3,000 trainers who will in turn train the party’s 40,883 agents for each of Kenya’s polling stations.

At the polling station, Jubilee Party has set up a checklist for the agents to tick as the statutory results declaration Form 34A is being filled by the presiding officer.

PRECAUTION

“We want to have our agents know that they have the power to question and query: That the process depends on them not letting any irregularity or illegality happen as they watch,” said Ms Guchu.

“We are teaching our agents to know what a Form 34A looks like, what it should have, where it should be stamped, what security features should be there and who should sign it.”

The party has also asked all its agents to ensure they get a legible carbon copy of the form before it leaves the polling station.

President Kenyatta has insisted that he was robbed of victory “on the basis of process, rather than the will of the people – the ballot” and has said that the apex court should have ordered a recount of the ballot papers.