MP relieved as vote recount bid flops

By Alex Namuliro

Kakamega, Kenya: A court declined an application for a recount of valid votes cast in Khwisero constituency during the hearing of a petition challenging the election of Mr Benjamin Andola as MP.

The petitioner, Mr Benjamin Andama was on the receiving end when Justice George Dulu declined an application he had filed through his lawyer Albert Simiyu seeking a recount of valid votes cast in about 20 polling stations.

Valid votes

The application filed on June 26 2013, sought a recount of valid votes in the polling stations. The petitioner also wanted the court to grant him a re-tallying after the recount and also a scrutiny of the votes.

Justice Dulu termed the application competent but in his ruling declined to grant the request.

 He observed that although the Independent Electoral Boundaries Commission (IEBC) officials, who earlier testified before the court, accepted that they made clerical errors during the counting and tallying, there was not enough basis to grant the petitioner the requests in the application.

“In my ruling I hereby find the application has no merit and therefore I dismiss it,” Dulu told the court.

The petitioner had filed the application in view of allegations of inaccurate counting and tallying of votes.

Earlier on during the proceedings, the petitioner told the court that IEBC announced another set of results after reconciliation of figures when they discovered they had made some clerical errors. When IEBC declared Mr Andola the winner, he had 10, 662 votes while Mr Andama had 10, 048 votes.

Reconciliation of figures

This was later rectified by IEBC after what they called reconciliation of figures after they realised the cleric errors that saw the MPs votes reduced to 10, 582 while the petitioner still came in second with 10, 370.

Andama was a candidate on a Wiper Democratic Party ticket. The case continues on July 17 where the lawyers are expected to make their submissions.