Raila to IEBC: No manual register, no elections

Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Coalition presidential candidate Raila Odinga has demanded that the elections agency employs the use of a manual register to complement its plan to solely identify all voters electronically.

Failure to which, Mr Odinga said, “there will be no elections.”

Mr Odinga, who was speaking in Githunguri in Kiambu County, said failure by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to have a manual backup to the electronic identification of voters was a recipe for disaster.

“With a manual register, it will be easy to tell how many people have voted in every polling station. In the electronic register, there is no record that remains. That is why we’re saying that there must be a manual register at every polling station. It is not negotiable. We’re telling the IEBC they must have a manual register along with the biometric identification of voters on that day. La hivyo, hakuna uchaguzi (Failure to which, there will be no election),” Mr Odinga said.

The IEBC had last week seemed to bow to pressure to use the manual register alongside the electronic one, but chairman Wafula Chebukati and chief executive Marjan Hussein Marjan insisted it will only be employed as a “last resort.”

During a consultative meeting with the four presidential candidates—Mr Odinga, Deputy President William Ruto, Roots Party candidate George Wajackoyah and his Agano counterpart David Mwaure Waihiga—Mr Chebukati assured that the issue of the register would be addressed amicably.

“The issue of the register will be addressed and it will be shared with the stakeholders and we shall break them down up to each polling station,” Mr Chebukati said at the meeting held at the Windsor Hotel in Kiambu County.

Mr Marjan, on his part, said: “The electronic register will be the primary document that we shall use but we are also saying that we shall provide the physical register which would be used as a last resort.”