It is neck and neck in the Kajiado Central parliamentary by-election according to provisional results.
Jubilee Alliance Party candidate Patrick Tutui is leading with 10,970 votes, while his rival ODM candidate Elijah Memusi has 10,942 votes. Independent candidate Kuntai Nkhasuma has 67 votes so far.
Thirty more stations are yet to be counted before final results are released.
Monday’s exercise was marred by allegations of voter bribery after police arrested three people found with Sh100,000 for allegedly buying votes. ODM aspirant Elijah Memusi earlier contacted the Star complaining of voter bribery in the by-election. Memusi claimed that JAP officials bribed voters in Namanga, Maili Tisa, Bissil and parts of Kajiado town on Monday morning. “This is bribery and against election rules.
We have footage of people bribing people in all those areas I have given you. This is going to attract legal action against our competitors,” claimed Memusi.
He said his party would convene a press briefing on the matter. Kajiado West MP Moses Sakuda dismissed the allegations as “baseless” and “out of malice”. “He has smelled defeat, that is the reason why he is making wild claims about us. How can we do that, really? That is malice and he should be taken to account,” Sakuda said. He noted that members of the press who had been on the grounds would have noticed any irregularities.
“What Memusi should just do now is write his own statement accepting defeat instead of picking issues that were never there in the first place,” he told the Star on phone.
Despite the disruption, polling stations in the constituency which has a total of 39,545 registered voters, closed at 5pm as per the deadline set by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission. Most polling stations were deserted by 3pm however, IEBC officials and security personnel waited for more voters to turn up until closing at 5pm.
Source-the-star.co.ke
