Huge step as presidential ballot papers arrive

Pellets carrying the presidential ballots being loaded at the Al Ghurair Factory in Dubai. [Geofrey Mosuku]

The first batch of presidential ballot papers arrives in the country on Monday. Ballots packages for 190 constituencies left Al Ghurair printing firm in Dubai for Kenya in an exercise witnessed by Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) officials, representatives of presidential candidates, stakeholders and journalists.

The materials will spend two nights at the Sharjah Airport before being loaded on Saudi Air cargo to Nairobi. A second plane is expected in Nairobi on Tuesday.

Concerns raised

Saturday evening, IEBC described the move as a milestone.

“We have witnessed the printing and now loading of the pallets after verification exercise. We are happy that it’s now all systems go for August 8,” Commissioner Roselyne Akombe said.

Al Ghurair general manager Lakishmanan Ganapathy described the exercise as one of the biggest projects the company has undertaken in its ten years of security printing.

“We have all witnessed the loading and also destruction of the printing templates. The first plane will leave here on Monday and the second on Tuesday,” Ganapathy said.

Saturday, the inspection team randomly picked one of the pallets and inspected if the packaging was done accordance to the information provided by Al Ghurair.

Earlier, Thirdway Alliance presidential candidate Ekuru Aukot had raised concerns that the printer had done over 90 per cent of the work by the time the inspection team arrived in Dubai.

National Super Alliance had also claimed that some ballot papers were already in Nairobi.

But the firm disputed these allegations.

“We are reputable company and we cannot risk our reputation by printing extra papers,” Ganapathy stated.

While addressing the press on Friday, NASA flag bearer Raila Odinga said: “We suspect the ballot papers have already been printed. They are under special transit goods that are to be transported from greenhouses which are already in the country.”

The commission says about 6.5 per cent extra ballot papers have been printed instead of the 1 per cent which was earlier announced. IEBC says the percentage rose due to the binding of the ballot in a booklet containing 50 ballot papers.

This now means about about 800, 000 extra ballots will be printed for the presidential elections as opposed to 196,000 which had been stated on Thursday.

“Since each booklet has 50 ballots, the number has to be slightly higher than what we had anticipated. The printer cannot have a booklet with less than 50 ballots,” Commissioner Akombe explained.

Transparent exercise

This now means that Al Ghurair has printed 20,818,000 ballots for the presidential race while that of governor will contain 20,804,400.

They explained that there is this disparity because persons in prisons and Diaspora will vote in the presidential poll thus leading to more ballots.

Following the gazettement of Kikuyu MP Kimani Ichung’wa as unopposed, the number of ballots for the seat will be slightly lower than that of the presidential while the Women Representative and that of Senator will be the same as Governor.

MCA seat ballot papers will also be down at 20,787,600 after the commission gazetted the ODM candidate for Seme West ward in Kisumu as unopposed.