NAIROBI, Kenya, Jul 26 – The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission has said it will not announce presidential election results at regular intervals as they stream from constituencies into the tallying centre.
IEBC Chief Executive Officer Ezra Chiloba they will only make one official announcement of the results after the scanned results have been receive from all the 290 constituencies.
“We don’t have to spend a lot of time doing the announcements. What we need to do is to collect all the results as presented to us by the Returning Officers to allow us now to announce the results,” Chiloba explained.
The Commission also assured Kenyans that it will not tamper with the election results. Their work will only be to verify them before relaying them to Kenyans.
“Once the results come to the national tallying centre, we have no role in changing those results. If at all, we cannot subtract or add – our role is to verify if the threshold has been made to prepare the presidential outcome,” Chiloba in a statement.
Chiloba also said that if there are issues raised concerning the elections, hard copies will be called in for comparison and solve the dispute.
“If there is a dispute about what was scanned we can call in the hard copies so that we can do a comparison and solve the dispute,” said Chiloba.
All election officials from all polling centres will have sweeping powers such that they can eject people from polling stations and will be required to take an oath to show responsibility of what happens under their watch
“There has to be an oath which means that they will be responsible and whatever decision they make they have to defend it themselves when that time comes,” Chiloba added.
With barely two weeks to the General Election, the Inspector General of Police Joseph Boinnet unveiled choppers which will be deployed to zones marked as hotspots and they will be on standby at specific areas for use as need arises.
The government has in the meantime continued to assure Kenyans that their security is guaranteed.
“We are prepared to do our part it is not our responsibility to conduct elections it is the responsibility of IEBC,” said Fred Matiangi, the Acting Interior Cabinet Secretary for Interior in a statement
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