NASA claim Raila won on round one

The National Super Alliance (NASA) continued their sustained claim of a stolen election insisting that Opposition leader Raila Odinga won the annulled August 8, 2017 presidential election.

Yesterday, NASA claimed Raila beat President Uhuru Kenyatta by over 200,000 votes, even as the Independent and Electoral Boundaries (IEBC) and Jubilee Party dismissed their tally as wishful thinking.

In a press conference in Nairobi, the Opposition leaders claimed Raila and his running mate Kalonzo Musyoka garnered 8,041,726 votes against President Kenyatta’s 7,755, 428 votes.

The figures, according to the Opposition, are from the IEBC servers. The Opposition said it will use the figures to swear in Raila and Kalonzo Musyoka on Tuesday.

Siaya Senator James Orengo who spoke on behalf of the principals, said it was time their coalition and Kenyans stand and speak for the truth.

“We want Kenyans to know what happened so that they can make informed decision, we cannot have an election loser being declared the winner and we just assume and move on. We must confront such impunity,” said Orengo.

Nominated MP Godfrey Osotsi, an IT expert, used a PowerPoint presentation to show figures he claimed were manipulated in favour of Uhuru.

Raila, Kalonzo and Musalia Mudavadi keenly followed the presentation.

But in a statement to newsrooms, IEBC Vice Chair Connie Maina claimed the results declared by NASA were not genuine

“The commission is aware that NASA has released information purporting to be the actual presidential results of the August 8th, 2017 presidential election. We note that this is not the first time such claims have been made. Indeed, on August 10, 2017, NASA presented to the commission figures allegedly obtained from IEBC servers showing that Raila Odinga had won the election,” said Ms Maina.

She said the commission ably debunked this myth and that remains to be in the public domain, adding that a cursory review of what NASA made public yesterday, revealed a total misunderstanding of how the results system worked in the August 8 elections.

“The presentation by NASA totally misleads the public on the results pathway, the servers, information on the public portal and the forms used to declare results. We can only conclude that this is a deliberate effort to create a non-existent reality about the elections of 2017,” said the vice chair.

In the figures, Mr Osotsi claimed Raila was ahead in 26 counties, prison voting centres and diaspora while Uhuru and his deputy William Ruto took up the other 21 counties.

“From the figures, it is clear President Kenyatta lost to Raila. It is now time to rewrite the wrong,” said Osotsi.

However, House Majority Leader Aden Duale said NASA are just spreading fake results by claiming to have opened the IEBC servers.

“How could they generate results and at the same time ask IEBC to open the servers. Their journey to Canaan aborted so they do not know what to tell their supporters, they just keep lying to them,” he said.

Jubilee Party Vice chairman David Murathe accused NASA of playing with Kenyans’ minds insisting that the August 8 polls were nullified by the Supreme Court and was, therefore, null and void.

“We know NASA wants to use their cooked results to justify their purported swearing-in on Tuesday, all this is nonsense that exists in their heads, let them tell Kenyans where they got the results,” said Mr Murathe yesterday.

He said if NASA claims to have the cloud server results, then they must have hacked the IEBC server which was in itself a criminal act actionable by law.

A few days after last year’s General Election, IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati declared Uhuru the winner with 8.2 million (54.27 per cent) against Raila’s 6.7 million (44.74 per cent) but NASA successfully challenged the matter at the Supreme Court and had the results annulled.

In the subsequent repeat election, IEBC declared President Kenyatta winner of the October 26 that was skipped by Raila and Kalonzo insisting that the irregularities that compelled the Supreme Court to annul the August 8 poll made a strong case to reform the IEBC and it was not capable to conduct the October election as constituted.

President Kenyatta went ahead to will the elections by 7,483,895 votes out of the 7,616,217 valid votes cast, giving him a 98 per cent win.

On October 30, Jubilee blamed NASA for disenfranchising those who did not vote when it asked supporters to stay away on Election Day.