Kenya’s Elections Observation Group (ELOG) has confirmed that both Azimio and Kenya Kwanza coalitions deployed party agents to all polling stations.
The independent observer group that monitored the hotly contested August 9 poll across the 290 constituencies in the country’s 47 counties said agents from both the Azimio and United Democratic Alliance (UDA) party allied to the Kenya Kwanza coalition were present in almost all the polling stations and signed the declaration of results for the presidential election contained on form 34A.
In fact, the Azimio wing whose presidential flagbearer Raila Odinga has challenged the results at the Supreme Court had more agents than President-elect William Ruto’s UDA party.
According to Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) projections, Azimio party agents were present in 92.3pc of polling stations against UDA’s 92.0pc while representation for other parties (Roots and Agano) was above average at 68.3pc.
The release of the estimates comes in the wake of claims by Jubilee Party which is an affiliate of Azimio that their party agents were barred from accessing polling stations in Mt Kenya and Western regions.
Jubilee Party Secretary General, Jeremiah Kioni who has made rigging allegations is accusing the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) officials of blocking Azimio agents because their appointment letters lacked stamps.
Speaking to the media, on the day Azimio filed a petition seeking to nullify Ruto’s win, Kioni said they had water-tight evidence to prove that the poll was rigged.
ELOG last week released projections of their final tally corroborating electoral commission official presidential results declaring Ruto the winner.
“ELOG’s PVT estimates are consistent with IEBC’s official results for the 2022 presidential elections,” she added. “In light of our assessment of the Election Day processes and given that IEBC figures fall within the projected ranges, the PVT projections, therefore, corroborate the official results,” Anne Ireri, the group’s chairperson said.
The group’s projection gave Ruto 50.7 per cent to the IEBC’s 50.49 per cent with a margin of error of +/-2.1 per cent; for Raila Odinga, it was 48.7 per cent for the IEBC’s 48.85 per cent with a margin of error of +/-2.1 per cent.
Projections for the two other candidates George Wajackoyah and David Mwaure were 0.44 per cent and 0.23 per cent respectively, compared with the IEBC’s 0.5 per cent and 0.2 per cent.
