KENYA: POLITICS - A Kenyan civil society group has gone to court in an attempt to get the ongoing presidential vote tallying stopped

Record ID: 362541

  • Title: KENYA: POLITICS - A Kenyan civil society group has gone to court in an attempt to get the ongoing presidential vote tallying stopped
  • Date: 8th March 2013
  • Summary: NAIROBI, KENYA (MARCH04) (REUTERS) INTERIOR OF COURTROOM WITH LAWYERS AND JUDGES THREE JUDGE BENCH CLOSE OF JUDGE VARIOUS OF LAWYER PRESENTING CASE TO JUDGES COURT OFFICIALS LAWYER HARUN NDUBI ADDRESSING MEDIA OUTSIDE COURT MEDIA (SOUNDBITE) (English) LAWYER, HARUN NDUBI, SAYING: "The application we have filed before court is to seek two things, one is primarily that the
  • Embargoed: 23rd March 2013 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Kenya
  • Country: Kenya
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA51YOS5Y0C84NO6C2OBA9KQQ0G
  • Story Text: A civil society group on Friday March 08, filed a petition in Kenya's High Court seeking to have the ongoing tallying of presidential vote stopped.
    The Africa Center for Open Governance represented by lawyer Harun Ndubi says the Interim Electoral and Boundaries Commission should also resort to the electronic tallying system which failed on the second day of use after a bug hit it.

    "The application we have filed before court is to seek two things, one is primarily that the IEBC should be directed to revive the electronic voter tallying mechanism because it is the only accountable mechanism in terms of counting and protecting or defending the integrity of the ballot. Two, before that is done, we are asking that the manual tallying process that is in court be stopped forthwith until they revive that electronic process which we hope it could do shortly." said Ndubi.
    Ndubi also requested that the court hear the petition as matter of urgency.

    "But in failure of doing that and the last alternative, in failure that they cannot revive the electronic voter tallying mechanism, we are saying that then in doing the manual tallying mechanism they should start afresh with the presidential, all the presidential results using the primary source of information being form 34 which is obtained from every polling station." said Ndubi.
    The high court is set to rule on the petition at 1300GMT on Friday.
    Kenya counted ballots from Monday's elections and gave Uhuru Kenyatta an early lead in the presidential election that brought out millions of voters despite pockets of violence in the north and the coastal region of the country that killed at least 15 people.
    However, a hitch in the electronic vote tallying system slowed down the counting process and was abandoned for manual tallying instead.
    Kenya's Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) on Thursday March 07, 2013 refuted claims its members were involved in any form of rigging of the presidential vote.
    Presidential candidate Raila Odinga's campaign team said some of the results of Monday's (March 04, 2013) election had been doctored and called for the vote count to be halted, remarks that could inflame a largely peaceful poll.
    The results are expected later on Friday.
    If no candidate gets more than 50 percent of votes in the first round, the top two will go to a run-off, provisionally set for April depending on any legal challenges.
    ENDS
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