EU finds minimal errors in March poll

By ALLY JAMAH

Kenya: The European Union observers of the March General Election have said the processing of election results lacked the necessary transparency, but concluded that overall, the polls were credible.

Speaking yesterday while releasing the report of the EU observer mission, they said the tallying process was not directly observable and results were not sufficiently traceable, but insisted that the election results were still accurate.

“The processing of results lacked the necessary transparency, as party agents and election observers were not given adequate access to the tallying centres,” said Chief Observer Krzysztof Lisek.

He added: “We noted minor discrepancies in tallies and between numbers of votes cast for presidential and other electoral races. However, the differences were almost all less than one per cent. This figure tends to imply tallying errors rather than fraud.”

The observers called on the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission to publish detailed procedures for the tallying of ballots in future elections.