By Renson Buluma
KENYA; Independent Electoral and Boundary Commission (IEBC) Bunyala district coordinator on Tuesday admitted to making errors that partly contributed to disputed Budalangi constituency election results.
While giving evidence in a poll petition filed by Henry Nadimo, a voter challenging the election of Budalangi MP Ababu Namwamba, Budalangi Constituency returning officer Paul Kones acknowledged before Busia High Court Judge Francis Tuiyott that his clerks made errors when filling form 35 which resulted in the number of vote cast exceeding number of registered voters.
“The figures were being keyed in manually and the clerk could have copied the results from form 36 when entering the figures,’ said Kones during re-examination by Namwamba lawyer’s Katwa Kigen.
The error saw a number of candidates garner more votes than the actual votes they got while others got less than what they garnered on the Election Day.
He cited Sifugwe Primary school, Runyu and Bubango as the three polling stations where the errors occurred.
In one of the station, Namwamba benefited by getting extra 19 votes while another candidate Constatine Namwakira got 69votes more than she deserved and at the same station Former Area MP Raphael Wanjala had his votes reduced by 21 votes.
The clerks, in one of the stations, recorded Narc Kenya candidate George Okado as having garnered 106 votes while in the actual voting he got only 6 votes cast in his favour.
Kones noted that results were supposed to be relayed electronically but due to failure of the electronic tallying system they resorted to manual tallying a stop gap measure.
Kones however noted that the error were marginal and could not have altered the outcome of the results which saw Namwamba trounce his nearest opponent by a margin of over 5000 votes. Namwamba got 1,896 against Wanjala who came second with 6,018 votes.
The returning officer acknowledged having received information that a voter at Mau Mau polling station had been issued with two ballot papers for a candidate but added that the vote did not vote twice since the error was discovered before he voted.
Kones at the same time acknowledged that he received a call from Wanjala who complained that there were candidates who were holding night campaigns.
“I advised him to report the matter to police which he never did, neither did he make a formal complaint to the IEBC,” said Kones.
He also dismissed claims that Ababu never submitted his campaign timetable adding that the former Sports minister submitted his time table a few days after presenting his nomination paper.
