The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Vice-Chairperson Juliana Cherera has filed her affidavit in the case challenging William Ruto’s election at the Supreme Court.
In the 104-page document, Cherara has laid bare how the IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati operated in an opaque manner which she claims ‘effectively subverted the constitution and the election laws in the tallying and verification of the presidential election results.
Cherera who is one of the four commissioners who disowned the presidential results, informs the Apex Court that the presidential election results declared and announced by Chebukati on August 15 were not from IEBC and that they belonged to Chebukati.
She adds that the actions preceding the declaration of the presidential election results were a continuation of the Chairperson’s trend of lack of transparency and contempt for fellow commissioners that has characterised his tenure in the commission.
“By his actions and conduct, therefore, the chairperson mistakenly turned the commission into a one-person show and in the process, effectively subverted the constitution and the elections laws,” Cherera states in part in her court papers.
She further argues that the process adopted during the tallying and verification of the presidential results was compounded by lack of transparency.
Through lawyer Apollo Mboya, Cherera adds that the unverified presidential election results which saw Chebukati declare William Ruto as the President-elect did not indicate the total number of registered voters, the total number of valid votes cast to support the percentages scored by the four candidates or the number of the rejected votes, if any.
Cherera further reveals that at no point did any commissioner seek to ‘moderate’ election results as per their constitutional mandate.
She further states that the results read out at the national tallying centre had variance and errors which representatives of the presidential candidates and political parties brought to the attention of the court verbally and in writing.
