Raila: National Intelligence Service interfering with voter registration to influence election results

CORD leader Raila Odinga (left) consults with Mombasa Governor Hassan Ali Joho (centre) and his Kilifi County counterpart Amerson Kingi (right) during a vote hunting mission at Mtwapa town in Kilifi County where he urged people especially youths to register in large numbers, January 24, 2017. [PHOTO BY GIDEON MAUNDU/STANDARD].

Opposition leader Raila Odinga has claimed that the National Intelligence Service (NIS) is heavily involved in the ongoing voter registration with the aim of influencing results in August.

Raila said NIS interference in the voter registration involves taking Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) kits across the borders of Uganda and Ethiopia and assisting citizens of the two countries to register in a Kenyan election process.

He further claimed the agency was also assisting citizens of the neighbouring countries to acquire Kenyan identification documents then helping them cross into Kenya and register as voters.

“This NIS-driven process is responsible for the multiple registrations, shared identity cards and many cases of people who are captured as registered when indeed they had never done so,” Raila said.

BALLOT STUFFING

The former premier claimed youths who enlisted with the ‘dubious’ National Youth Service (NYS) exercise were being registered without their knowledge.

He further alleged that in the 2013 elections, NIS had its officers absorbed into the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) as polling clerks and other strategic positions, with the sole aim of helping Jubilee attain a dubious victory.

He claimed that in 2007, NIS was deeply involved in ballot stuffing among other irregularities to help the Party of National Unity (PNU) whose presidential candidate then was President Mwai Kibaki to win.

“NIS must let the IEBC do its work as an independent institution. The intelligence agency must equally operate as a politically non-partisan and independent institution whose duty it is to safeguard the integrity of the electoral process and not interfere with it,” he said.

He went on: “Interfering with the process through which our country determines its leadership is one of the most serious crimes a public institution and more so an intelligence agency can be involved in.”

“NIS will break down this nation and send it to the dogs, if it continues on this path of seeking to influence election results by way of fraud. We challenge the NIS to come clean on this matter and assure the country that it is abandoning its disgraceful involvement in voter registration.”

Raila said Kenyans were not prepared to have the NIS choose for them their next leader again.

But the Interior ministry dismissed Odinga’s claims, saying they were malicious and intended to undermine the ongoing voter registration.

In a statement, the ministry’s spokesman Mwenda Njoka challenged the Opposition chief to provide evidence.

“If there is anything like that, the respectable thing the former Prime Minister ought to do is to record a statement with the relevant authorities so that action can be taken. The unsubstantiated claims are outrightly malicious and intended to undermine the voter registration process,” said Mr Njoka.

Jubilee-nominated MP Johnson Sakaja accused Raila of trying to delegitimise the ongoing voter registration and the final voter register because he knew that the results would not favour him.

Mr Sakaja argued Raila’s vote blocs had lower numbers than Jubilee’s and that in the long-term his claims would serve as another plank in his narrative when trying to explain why he lost, after the August elections.

“As Jubilee we know that Raila Odinga knows he cannot stop the re-election of President Uhuru Kenyatta so now he is looking for excuses to use when he loses,” he said.

The former National Alliance (TNA) party Chairman (now defunct) said that the reason Kenya manages to keep going forward successfully despite Raila’s constant attempts to destabilise it was because there are parts of the State that are not politicised.

“Jubilee would like to assure all public servants, police officers, regional administrators, security officers, military officers and members of all other arms of Government that their jobs are safe under Jubilee; both now and after the next elections,” Sakaja added.