How IEBC prevented nullification of 2013 result

Former IEBC commissioner Thomas Letangule (Photo: Courtesy)

A former electoral commissioner has lifted the lid on behind-the-scene actions that helped avert a constitutional crisis in the 2013 General Election.

In a memoir titled Trailblazer, former Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) official Thomas Letangule reveals the intrigues that characterised the chaotic episodes at Bomas of Kenya as both Jubilee and CORD (now defunct) agents engaged in exchanges.

Legal advice from lawyer Paul Nyamodi led to IEBC throwing out of party agents.

"In the midst of all the chaos, the chairman (Issack Hassan) asked Paul Nyamodi, the legal advisor to IEBC, to confirm for us the role of an agent. Nyamodi came up with a clear explanation," Mr Letang'ule says in his book that will be launched today.

Letangule and eight other commissioners were hounded out of office last year following sustained pressure from the Opposition, which accused them of bungling the 2013 general election.

According to Letang'ule, Uhuru Kenyatta's victory risked being nullified if a seven-day window granted by law to the commission to declare the election results lapsed.

The row was triggered by the unexplained crashing of the IT servers that enabled the relaying of results electronically, sparking fears of plans to manipulate the results.

The former commissioner recalled arriving at Bomas to find unusually heightened security and momentarily panicked.

IEBC had reverted to manual tallying after the system collapsed amid protests from the opposition, which feared results could be manipulated.

The stand-off threatened to derail the results announcement, which meant that if IEBC failed to beat the seven-day deadline, then Uhuru's election as president would be nullified.

Nyamodi informed the commission that presidential agents who were at the Bomas tallying centre were there at the invitation of the commission, Letang'ule says in his book.

"Of course, it did not go unnoticed that some of the agents were simply maliciously disputing the results so that more time could elapse," he says.

He continues: "We could tell that some people were unhappy and wanted the seven-day window period to close, so election results could be nullified. A quick decision had to be made to curb further delays."

However, former IEBC chief executive James Oswago seemed to be downplaying the quagmire the commission was staring at, telling commissioners that the shouts between the agents and IEBC were healthy and normal in a democracy.