Panic has gripped the Jubilee Coalition headed by Uhuru
Kenyatta as details unravel on how the 2013 Presidential Elections were
manipulated to hand him a win by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries
Commission – IEBC, that is now the subject of a Supreme Court petition.
The emerging details point to a shocking scheme hatched by
circle of advisors and government functionaries within the intelligence and
civil service, way before the elections.
Analysts scrutinizing documents ahead of the Supreme Court
petition by the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy challenging the results,
were stuck by how technology was also used to aid Uhuru “defeat” Raila Odinga
of CORD.
“Kenyans can remember well that some curious things happened
with regard to the so called provisional results that IEBC kept churning out”,
says one of the lawyers handling the CORD petition.
“It was a statistical impossibility. Between March 4th
– March 7th, Raila Odinga was consistently stuck at 43/44% while
Uhuru stayed at 53%. Musalia was stuck at 2.8% while the margin between Uhuru
and Raila remained at 600,000-700,000 votes. This was impossible considering
that results were coming in randomly from all over Kenya. Yet these figures
remained consistent”.
After a confusing Friday 8th March when IEBC
postponed announcement of final constituency results till Saturday, a quick
operation was put in place to force acceptance of the results, amidst anxiety
by Kenyans that the voting process had been manipulated.
IEBC’s James Oswago reportedly called media houses late in
the night for a surprise final announcement of constituency results Friday
12.30am without indicating who had won.
Throughout the week IEBC had warned
media from declaring anyone the winner. However 30 minutes later KTN and NTV
got a “nod” to call the elections. From there on events moved quickly. At
1.30am KTN flew a banner indicating Uhuru Kenyatta was the winner. Several
stations in surprise followed suit. Kenyans would wake up on Saturday morning
to all TVs proclaiming “President Uhuru”, almost 12 hrs before Isaack Hassan
finally announced Uhuru’s win on Saturday afternoon.
The Weekly Citizen in this exclusive report can now report
stunning details of a rigging plot that would have passed undetected if all
players had stuck to the script and the “tyranny of numbers” theory had not
fallen flat on its face on March 4th.
According to CORD insiders and several statistics analysts
who have examined the IEBC voter register when it closed on Dec 18th, over
1,500,000 extra votes were “unexplained votes” votes that were for the
presidential result alone. Since according to the IEBC, every voter was given 6
ballot papers, IEBC will be hard pressed on how this happened.
If these allegations are proven then, Uhuru’s tally will
render his 6,173,433 vote announced by the IEBC to 4,673, 433. Which
could mean that Raila Odinga could have won the election if what CORD claims is
true.
The well calculated scheme was based on 3 critical things
that had to be done to force in Uhuru. The most important was to force a first
round win for Jubilee.
“It was obviously clear to us that any run-off would result
in an anti-Kikuyu vote in which only Kalenjins and Kikuyu’s would vote for
Uhuru while Raila takes off with the rest of the country’, says Central Kenya
Senator Elect over drinks at a popular Nairobi spot on the day the IEBC
announced Uhuru as President. “Winning Round One was never an option. It had to
happen”
Getting the numbers was an issue that had worried TNA
strategists one year before striking an alliance with William Ruto’s URP as the
Jubilee Coalition. Even if Ruto’s Kalenjin backyard was convinced to vote for
Uhuru, the numbers Kalenjins brought in were still not enough. Though the
“Tyranny of Numbers” propaganda was sold as a winning formula, insiders knew
the truth held a different reality. The 50% was simply not there. The best
Jubilee could manage was force a run-off their researchers said they would
lose.
The tyranny of the numbers was the psychological component
of the whole game; and the so was “PEACE” campaign enterprise, says a member of
the civil society
“It is Funny that the tyranny of numbers theory perpetuated
by Political Analyst Mutahi Ngunyi done in February 2013 mentions the same
figures Uhuru got in the final tally” says popular blogger Robert Alai.
Several contingency plans were made to ensure the plan
succeeds. One was to ensure that the Kikuyu and Kalenjin voter turn-out was to
hit 95% while hoping that CORD base’s turn-out would remain at the traditional
65% to 70%.
Like many assumptions made by the Jubilee strategy team,
their plan on turn-out was based on assumptions that CORD’s base would barely
attain their traditional turnout.
The second critical factor was use of technology to help add
up numbers as the infamous tyranny of numbers depended on factors outside
Jubilee’s control.
This plan to be used was borrowed from Ghana’s December 2012
Presidential Elections. The election which is now being contested at the
Ghanian Supreme Court was won by President John Mahama who was announced to
have secured 50.7% of votes, enough to avoid a run-off against NPP candidate
Nana Akufo-Addo with 47.7%. Akuf-Addo has filed a petition with evidence that
the vote was won by manipulating the electronic system.
In the Ghanian petition, proof has been revealed the company
hired by the Ghanaian Election Commission to supply data services – SuperLock
Technologies Ltd – also had a contract with the National Democratic Congress to
supply the same services to the party that included tallying. In the petition
NPP says it had found irregularities such as cases of over voting and instances
when people not registered by the new biometric finger-printing system were
able to vote.
According to the NPP and the other parties, these numbers
announced by the Ghana’s Electoral Commission did not correspond with actual
votes recorded in the 275 constituencies. They allege tampering of numbers by
the suppliers of IT services in favour of John Mahama. The commission also
reported that turnout was at an all time high of 81%.
In a dramatic incident during the elections, NPP stormed the
electronic suppliers premises and claimed to have caught the company’s data
personnel altering results before transmission to the National Tallying Centre
Similar to the Ghanaian case, the company that supplied
Kenya’s IEBC with the electronic data and call centre services is Ken Call. The
company whose connection to IEBC were never made public was charged with supplying
call centre services and hosting the data base from where the polling station
results were remitted to the IEBC. Ken Call also has a contract with
Uhuru Kenyatta’s The National Alliance party to supply tallying services of
results from polling stations!
“Results from Returning officers at polling stations being
transmitted electronically were first relayed to Ken Call’s servers for onward
transmission to Bomas”, an IEBC official told Weekly Citizen.
“Imagine the same server was being used to tally results for
TNA! This is where the electronic tampering of results took place as it was
easy to access the same server which was serving both the IEBC and TNA and
managed by the same company. When questions started being raised about the
contradiction between figures announced at polling stations and the ones on
IEBC screens at Bomas, the system mysteriously crashed!”
The official says it is unclear when the company was hired
by the IEBC and why the commission ignored the conflict of interest.
The Weekly Citizen has discovered that like the Ghanaian
case the plan by to rig the Kenyan Presidential vote was 3 pronged;
First, encourage the purchase of BVR kits by the IEBC. The
technology was simply meant to hoodwink the public and crash when plan B was to
be effected. Using unorthodox means that included bribing IEBC officials, the
more experienced 4G solutions which serves India that has over 500 million
voters was disqualified and Code Inc given the job to supply the kits. Code Inc
went into liquidation and was renamed Electoral Systems International after the
Fijian government exposed the company to be a branch of the Canadian
Intelligence Organisation. Part of the system’s technology was supplied by a
company linked to a Mr Chirchir, a former Commissioner at the IEBC
Secondly, as Ghana’s NPP claims in their petition, the
ruling party used Super Lock Technologies Ltd to hack into the system and
pre-determine a mathematical formula that adjusts figures as they come for both
candidates while keeping any other candidates at a predetermined formula to
ensure they do not harm the intended outcome. (This possibly explains why
Uhuru’s margins with Raila never changed even with random results coming from
all over the country). Yet even with this plan, Jubilee knew they would
have to top up “few” numbers based as the 50% + 1 was still proving elusive
with a week to the election.
The third and final strategy was the real plan. Play with
Kenyans’ minds by manipulating results and establishing a lead for Jubilee then
crash the system and go manual. This was arranged by declining to have a
back-up server which would retain evidence of the manipulation. With only one
server, a deliberate crash would be final and would destroy evidence.
According to Maina Kiai, former chairman of the a human
rights organization the technology was a red herring.
“This election was meant to be manual from start to finish
loopholes included” he writes in his Saturday Nation column. “A manual result
is what would allow different results to be announced at the Constituency,
County and Bomas. All these electronic gadgets and equipment were meant to pull
wool over our eyes”
“Even with this plan, the team knew they would have to top
up numbers based as the 50% + 1 still proved elusive with a week to the
election” says a TNA Mp Elect.
Then March 4th came.
While the scheme was to “minimally” add votes to the
“tyrannical numbers” to enable a Round One win, everything went wrong on March
4th Election day as the electorate in key battle ground areas
stunned Jubilee strategists with an anti Uhuru vote.
Luhyas expected to vote for Musalia up to 50% rebelled and
went for Raila. The 30% of the Kamba vote expected from Kitui through Charity
Ngilu failed to come in. Coast where Jubilee were expecting a 50-50 share with
CORD bolted to Raila. CORD and Raila took off with 70% of the Kisii vote. In
Kalenjin land, voter turnout fell below 70%. The “tyranny of numbers” was
becoming a flop. With predictions by Jubilee statisticians collapsing all over
on Election Day, the team after consultations had to quickly switch to Plan
B.
“This plan was aided by the decision by the IEBC to keep
open some polling stations well after 5pm, the official closing time” says an
ODM Chief Agent who manned a County in Rift Valley. Plan B called for manual
voting to improve the numbers. “In Rift Valley CORD agents were reportedly
intimidated and some left the polling stations as die hard URP activists some
of whom manned the polling centres now took over. “It was hard to control what
they were doing after that. Some people were now being given 2-3 presidential
ballots to get their target number. You had no idea who was voting and who
wasn’t.”
As former Attorney General Amos Wako disclosed at a press
conference last week “It appears the IEBC had several registers as they did not
even gazette any. We will be asking the Supreme Court to examine which register
was being used and which one was valid”.
It is obvious CORD’s petition will put IEBC to task show an
increase in voter registration after the registration ended on 18th Dec. In
some cases the register grew by 35% in one constituency after reconciliation.
On December 18th 2012 @IEBCpagedeclared
there were 14,337,399 Registered Voters. The Final Register indicates there
were 13,352,533 Voters
Other than manipulate the register using technology,
technology was also becoming an obstacle to get the right numbers and ensure a
Round 1 win. The Voter Identification Kit which required fingerprint
identification for voters could not be manipulated as “ghost” voters could not
get in to vote or double voters. They had to be physically present.
By 2pm, a crisis meeting was convened by Jubilee strategists
on how to shore up numbers in Rift Valley.
Mysteriously the Finger Print Identification kit stopped
working. Manual voting was introduced.
The IEBC electronic tallying system which was relaying fast
results with a 53% lead for Uhuru four hours after 5pm, suddenly slowed down
with just a million votes in. Then the “IEBC” server which in reality belonged
to Ken Call crashed. And the results slowed down to a trickle. By 11pm IEBC
announced to the press that announcement of provisional results had been halted
and pushed to Tuesday.
Most IT experts confirm that the amount of data being
remitted for the 33,000 polling stations in terms of text messages could not
have crashed the system.
“It is very little data. Safaricom, Airtel and Orange deal
with almost 300 million text messages daily. The data from polling stations was
not that much”, says an employee of Safaricom on condition of anonymity. “What
is puzzling is why on such an important exercise IEBC and Ken Call did not
install the standard back-up server which would saved remitted results and
revived the process”.
The CORD team believes Isaack Hassan’s explanations were a
cover-up and that the technology “use” and “failure” were part of the strategy
to rig the elections.
“The electronic system kept Uhuru and Raila at particular
percentages to psychologically make Kenyans believe Uhuru was winning and Raila
was losing. However since the figures at Bomas were not matching forms 34, 35,
36, and the Jubilee “tyranny of numbers” formula had failed, the electronic
tallying system had to go.
Maina Kiai is more brutal in his assessment calling IEBC’s
excuses “hogwash”. “First it was that the server crashed. Then, than one side
of the disk was full and unable to accept results. Then that presiding officers
were slow in transmitting. The maximum capacity required for data from 33,000
polling stations is just 2GB, less than what a mobile phone can take!”
With the plan in progress for manual voting, by Wednesday
Rift Valley Turn-Out was being reported at 90% while Central had risen to 95%.
Based on the Kriegler report this numbers were obviously inflated. However more
was required as Uhuru had dropped below 50%. So delays had to be created for
Returning Officers to re-adjust figures.
The diversionary tactic kept Kenyans patient as Issack
Hassan kept talking of delays caused by “verification”, “technological
challenges” and introduced a phrase “complex elections” that would be
repeatedly used throughout the Bomas process.
With the announcement that manual voting would be used, the
vote tallying took a different outlook as the initial 48 hrs in which all
provisional results were to be announced dragged into days and tallying began
afresh. Questions about discrepancies by CORD officials resulted in IEBC
throwing them out. A compliant media was threatened into silence and no
criticism of the IEBC was to be aired.
The Bomas tallying centre was placed under heavy security as
the once accessible Chairman of the IEBC now avoided all media questions
regarding the process.
“This is the most opaque electoral commission and ranks
lower than even the late Kivuitu Commission” said one of CORD’s lawyers James
Orengo.
In the deliberate confusion that followed strange results
started flowing off the IBC press briefings. Among the cases are;
Wajir North had a 92% Voter Turn-Out for spot whose history
indicates 50-60%. In Wajir West, if the Final Register hadn’t been adjusted,
99.45% of the Registered Voters would have voted. In Nyaki East in North Imenti
with 12000 registered voters 15300 are reported to have voted!
In Kajiado South, the people who voted (42,276) is higher
than the people registered in Dec (41,040).Register adjusted to 46,218 to
conform. In Sigor, the people who voted (19,704) is higher than the people
registered in Dec (19,337).Register adjusted to 21,341 to conform.
“How does Turkana Central with 25,970 votes as at 18th Dec
end up with 34,486 voters after reconciliation?! Where did 8,516 voters come
from?” asks Dr Makodingo, a political analyst on his twitter page.
Worse still Worse still, IEBC’s figures refuse to add up
inspite of efforts to “correct errors”. Valid Votes (12,222,980) plus Rejected
Votes (108,975) add up to 12,331,955 and not their tally of 12,338,667!!
“It is strange that 1,500,000 persons only cast a vote
for a president and across Kenya this number is reflected in joint votes cast
for Senators, Governors, Mps, Women Reps or County Reps. It is an obvious case
of manual ballot box stuffing and double voting for Uhuru” says Statistics
analyst Dr Makodingo
Presently CORD may only have to prove that the 8,000 votes
votes Uhuru received to add to his declared 50% is fraudulent. If that is done
the Supreme Court can order a fresh poll within 60 days.
