Court orders recount of votes in a Nyeri MCA petition

A court has ordered a recount of ballot papers cast in five polling stations in Kieni, Nyeri County.

Senior Principal Magistrate James Macharia issued the directive, noting that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) recorded disparities in the figures from the polling stations.

The order follows a suit challenging the outcome of Thegu- River Member of County Assembly seat election.

The magistrate found that the petitioner- United Democratic Alliance (UDA) candidate Simon Mwangi who is challenging the election of MCA Patrick Wachira, provided sufficient grounds for scrutiny and recount of the votes cast in five out of the 18 polling stations he had cited electoral malpractices.

As a result, he asked the electoral agency to avail certified copies of forms 36A, 36B and 36C besides forms 37A, 37B and 37C to be used in the re-count.

In a ruling, the Magistrate said that the affected polling stations were the; New KCC Grounds in Chaka (two out of four), Karundas Secondary School polling station (one out of two), Chaka Primary 1 (five), New KCC grounds (four) and Chaka Primary 2 (one out of 5).

At the New KCC Grounds in Chaka polling station 2, the court found that there were alterations in form 36A that were not counter-signed, the difference in the altered votes was also substantial.

“Whereas at Karundas Secondary, the total number of registered voters was nil but the same document shows that the IEBC recorded 309 total valid votes,” said the Magistrate.

As for Chaka Primary School polling station 1 and the New KCC Grounds Polling station 4, the court found that forms 36As had alterations that were not counter-signed.

At Chaka Primary School polling station 5, form 36A shows that it recorded 227 total valid votes but in actual counting, the total figure comes to 329 votes.

While disputing the request seeking a recount of votes for the 13 other polling stations, Mr Macharia faulted the petitioner for failing to present sufficient evidence on why he wanted the exercise repeated.

Presiding officers

He said that some of the mistakes which were recorded by the presiding officers on Form 36A, were corrected by the returning officer on Form 36B.

In some other cases, the magistrate said that the UDA candidate could not provide proof of how some of his votes were given to other candidates.

“Further, none of his witnesses before court said that they were eye-witnesses to the allegations in the suit,” ruled the magistrate.

The court also disputed claims that some of the political agents belonging to Mr Mwangi were chased away from their polling stations, saying, the electoral agency through its polling station diary, provided reasons as to why the agents were turned away.

While issuing directives on how the recount exercise will be done, the Magistrate ordered the IEBC to present the ballot boxes before court on Tuesday.

“All parties in the suit will be required to present one representative to oversee the exercise which the Court’s Senior administrator will conduct as from 9:00 am,” said the magistrate.

Following the exercise, a report will be presented to the court on Thursday for it to make a decision.

Meanwhile, the High Court in Nyeri has heard that a suit challenging Kieni's parliamentary election results has a total of 62 witnesses.

During the session on Monday before Justice Dora Chepkwony, the court heard that the petitioners- a chief agent allied to former MP Kanini Kega known as Mr James Maina and voter Geoffrey Wahome had prepared a total of 17 witnesses for the suit.

The defence- the IEBC and MP Njoroge Wainaina has 44 witnesses.

Justice Chepkwony directed that the matter resumes from December 13 to December 22, for the hearing of the witnesses.