Chebukati broke law on poll results, claim ‘Cherera Four’

Four former electoral commissioners yesterday stood their ground and dismissed results of the 2022 presidential race, insisting that the election was marred with irregularities and the results muddled with discrepancies.

The four, who appeared before the National Dialogue Committee at the Bomas accused their then chairman, Wafula Chebukati, of overstepping his mandate in handling the presidential election results.
They claimed Chebukati went against the law when he declared William Ruto winner of the presidential race.

When announcing the results on August 15, last year, Chebukati said Ruto garnered 7.1 million votes (or 50.49 per cent) against Raila Odinga’s 6.9 million votes (or 48.85 per cent).

But yesterday, former commissioner Francis Wanderi, one of the electoral body’s bosses who came to be known as ‘the Cherera Four’, said: “We never tallied the results from the constituencies and they were tallied by a handpicked number of people who worked with the chairman.”

The Cherera Four were; commission vice-chair Juliana Cherera, Wanderi, Justus Nyang’aya and Irene Masit.

Just before Chebukati, who was chairman of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) announced that Ruto had won the presidential election, the four held a press conference at the Serena Hotel in Nairobi during which they described the process of tallying the results as “opaque”.
The first three later resigned from office when President Ruto formed a tribunal to investigate their conduct.

Masit opted for the inquiry, led by Justice Aggrey Muchelule, and which recommend that she be sacked after it found her guilty of misconduct.

Yesterday, Wanderi told the Bomas talks team that one of the commissioners, Abdi Guliye, and IEBC chief executive Marjan Hussein Marjan were among the officials that Chebukati handpicked to tally the presidential election results. He said he and the other three commissioners were denied access to Form 34C, which is used to declare the presidential election results.

In his submissions, Nyang’aya said the move by Chebukati to deny him and his colleagues a role in the tallying and crosschecking of the results kept them in the dark and that was why they questioned the validity of the results that Chebukati announced.

“We maintain our position that the results of the 2022 presidential election are indeterminable as they were neither tabulated nor verified by the commissioners in accordance with the process contemplated under Article 138,” said Nyang’aya.

Forensic audit

“Chebukati only came to us and told us; ‘who wants to announce the results with me?’ We had the results of what Chebukati thought were the results but in a real sense this was not the true results.”

In her submissions, which she made via zoom, Cherera dismissed the results that Chebukati announced, and recommended that the results servers be opened and a forensic audit conducted as soon as possible.

“We disowned the results because of the manner of opaqueness that surrounded the whole process,” she said. “The truth is that Chebukati kept us in the dark. Tallying was only done by a few individuals, leaving the four of us behind.”

According to Wanderi, the commissioners were expected to tally the results and the chair (Chebukati) was to declare the winner.

“Unfortunately, we were not allowed to do that,” he told the committee.

According to him, all commissioners were required to sign form 34C, which had a summary of presidential election results from all constituencies.

“That form was never availed to us. What we got was a form containing a summary of the results from all counties,” he said.

He also told the talks team that he and his two colleagues were forced to resign from their positions and did not quit their jobs out of their own volition.

“It was unfair for us to be forced out. We hope the matter will be looked into.”

When Azimio presidential candidate Raila Odinga challenged the election results in the Supreme Court, the ‘Cherera Four’ also filed affidavits supporting the petition that sought to challenge William Ruto’s win. Azimio’s case was later dismissed and Raila said that though they would respect the decision, they did not agree with.

Later, Chebukati accused the four dissenting commissioners of trying to subvert the will of Kenyans.
While appearing before Justice Aggrey Muchelule led tribunal on January 24, this year, Chebukati said that the four were endorsing attempts to breach the Constitution and consequently subvert the will of the people.

“The Constitution of Kenya is very clear on the system of democracy and we as a commission were put in place to ensure that Kenyans express their will through the ballot,” he said.

Yesterday, Wanderi proposed that Kenya borrows a leaf from the Ghanaian system.

“They have the chair who has two deputies. They are the accounting officers who are full-time staff,” he told the Bomas team.

Meanwhile, Masit, who told the team that she was out of the country for security reasons, said she had received threats, prompting her to flee for her safety.

“Remember I come from Rift Valley. They would say that I betrayed the community. I received threats and I was even trailed. Now they call me a betrayer and I was removed from all Whatsapp groups,” she said.
Cherera said that what they went through during their stint at the commission should not be experienced by any other official.

“We want the next generation of commissioners at IEBC be people that will be handled with the integrity they deserve and that their voice will not be shut down,” she said.

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