AfriCOG Details IEBC’s Flaws And Concludes That Elections Were Not Free, Fair Or Transparent

Africa Centre for Open Governance (AfriCOG) has described the 2017 Kenyan General Elections as “neither free, fair, transparent or regular”.

The non-profit organization which had a suit thrown out over the also disputed March 4, 2013, presidential election between Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga said in its statement that the IEBC failed to perform in line with the Constitution.

Read Also: Kenya Election Observers: Process Was Free And Fair And Without Manipulation

“It is very hard to burglar-proof a house when the burglars are already inside,” said AfriCOG executive director Gladwell Otieno on Monday at their office in Lavington, Nairobi.

Otieno said the government spent a lot of money purchasing equipment meant to boost the election’s credibility but that “progress is barely visible”.

“We have the same amount of failures that we experienced in 2013 even with the new technology.”

“The 2013 election was not fair and credible. Electronic systems to prevent irregularities failed, IEBC did not have an official voter register and unfortunately, in 2017 they did not have it either.”

She noted that her organization saw numerous irregularities during the whole election process like the voter registration failures in some areas, which left equipment unable to recognize some members of the public.

Ms. Otieno also noted that returning officers complained about losing their passwords or that their laptops crashed which resulted in them submitting results by phone.

“They did not offer equal conditions and opportunities for all candidates to take part. IEBC failed to allow political parties to inspect all the facilities being used in the elections.”

“They also failed in protecting ballot boxes after elections so as to prevent them from being tampered with.”

Otieno also said agents were locked out of tallying centers on allegations of being rowdy after a perceived system failure. She said they did not witness counting and caot assert that the results presented were true.

“Forms for presidential, governors and MPs results contained different numbers of registered voters. The process did not offer equal conditions and opportunities for some citizens, due to the unknown delay in some areas, to have access to polling stations and to vote.”

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The AfriCOG boss finally stated that the results aounced by the electoral agency did not match those of a single candidate.

“The IEBC’s portal displayed results of some areas even before the returning officers had transmitted the results,” she said.

“There was a suspicious constant graph of results from the begiing of the transmission which is quite strange if the results were being sent randomly all over the country.”