Wafula Chebukati on Monday evening announced his fake presidential election results and provided a fake certificate to William Ruto. This is probably the last time these two people will be relevant in our country ever.
Before he made his shameful announcement, four commissioners from the IEBC refused to be part of the exercise. The four, including the deputy chair of IEBC Juliana Cherera, walked out of Bomas and told Kenyans that their tallying system at Bomas was not transparent and not credible.
They were not willing to take ownership of what was being cooked up at Bomas by the IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati who they left to make the announcement with only two commissioners supporting his so-called presidential election results.
Before Wafula Chebukati came to the stage Kenyans were waiting for hours on live TV after he promised to announce the results and it took more than three hours for him to come out and announce his bogus thing.
I was with my son who has so many countries where he is a citizen, starting with Eritrea where his mother comes from and they give them citizenship as soon as they are born, Canada where he was born, Italy where his family lives, and of course, Kenya and we usually come for elections.
Last time in 2017 we traveled across the country to Nairobi on election day and it was fun. People were everywhere. We even saw the video of the Githeri man. Everything was good. We went to the voting station at Maimuto in Kabete constituency and that is where our family friend Ndungi Githuku lives and that time he took us to the voting station and we just hang around in Maimuto town and eat food there. We had great fun.
Then it blew up and the cops shot some kids in Nairobi including a toddler and we said we had to run. It is not going to happen this time. Of that, we know. Yes, we do.
So today the young man was telling me our country is ruined because we can’t have fair elections and that there was going to be a fight and all those things and I told him, that is not going to happen. We are smarter now. Then I go out of the house and come back half an hour later and he tells me I missed everything as the situation exploded at Bomas and he was watching it on NTV. I was like not again.
But this election the waiting was ridiculous and IEBC never even bothered to tell Kenyans why its chair was sitting on the results of the election which he already had. He knew they were fake and he was trying to persuade fellow IEBC members to support his electoral theft and four of them refused as Kenyans waited everywhere.
Kenyans had to witness live war at Bomas as chairs were being thrown all over and complete chaos reigned at the national tallying center. That is the country we have right now thanks to Chebukati and the people paying him to steal the elections.
Ruto keeps saying that “It’s God who brought me this victory”. Frankly, who could have thought that Wafula Chebukati would be declared God in our country? Now he needs to find some heaven to go to rather quickly.
Kenyans are not going to have violence and street fights after this horrible mess by Chebukati and the IEBC even with all the thieves paying them. This is a walkover in the Supreme Court. Four IEBC commissioners walked out of this electoral theft and the Supreme Court is going to order a re-run.
A few things could be troublesome. One is that once the petition against the results are filed we have no idea how many other things will be discovered in there and it could be nasty stuff. Everything will have to be looked at and not just the IEBC commissioners who refused to be involved in the fake election results.
Secondly, Chebukati is not going to be involved in the presidential election re-run. He cooked it and he is the reason Kenyans have to do this again. So for that alone, he has to go. His term as IEBC chairman ends with this last election where he has done more harm than he did in 2017.
Reconstituting a new IEBC cannot be done in weeks. How long is that going to take? The Ruto camp is going to do everything they can to get the four commissioners who rejected this electoral fraud out of the IEBC. Chebukati and his gang of three commissioners are history. How does the country get a new IEBC?
The new IEBC will actually have to hire a different company to conduct the re-run election with new servers and all that. Everything Chebukati used will be trashed in the re-run elections. That could take a lot of time and the constitution will be amended to accommodate that. Meanwhile, Uhuru Kenyatta will be our next president for a while. He should thank Chebukati for this.
At the end of it all Azimio has to learn from whatever mistakes they made in this election and build from there to take the presidency and it can be done.
For example, Azimio is asking the IEBC to give them copies of forms 34 A, B, and all that with data on the election numbers. They have a right to ask for that but they should already have those forms in pictures taken by the agents at the constituency level.
There seems to have been too much laziness in Azimio with agents who should be in every voting station and at every constituency tallying point taking copies and pictures of everything. That should not happen again. Whatever is in the IEBC portal should already be in the hands of election agents if they were doing their job. Otherwise, you allow IEBC to put whatever they want in the damn portal.
The one thing Kenyans have to be very careful about is that a lot will also depend on how both sides behave after the results. Ruto and his bunch are going to try to form a government. It is not going to happen but how they go about it is something Kenyans will be looking at very keenly. Ruto is going to be telling Kenyans that Chebukati is the next best thing since Jesus left our planet.
If the court rules he is a political thief, that could be him and Ruto going down together. If Ruto actually stole this election he is losing the re-run because Kenyans are just fed up with this crap of stolen elections every five years. Ruto has to be very careful here. If he supports election thievery and the Supreme Court rules against him he will be dead politically more than ever before.
Azimio is going to file a petition and start mobilizing the country for another presidential election. They have to do that with dignity, firmness, and very peacefully. Then they will take the seat.
And then there is this little problem for Chebukati and his sponsors. He has been put in a portal and he can’t breathe there.
Here are the seven members of IEBC who have full membership now. They have to vote for all IEBC decisions and actions. Chebukati has only two of those members endorsing his 2022 presidential elections results which are henceforth NULL and VOID.
The Supreme Court will ask Chebukati how many members of the IEBC voted for the results he announced. He will say two plus himself. Then the court will ask him how many board members voted against the results he announced. He will say four. Then they will tell him the case is over and he can do the math of the board votes himself. No calculators or big arguments needed.
This could be the easiest case the Supreme Court of Kenya has handled on presidential elections and hopefully the last.
There are people out there arguing that according to the constitution the chairman of IEBC announces the results of the presidential elections and not the board. That is true but the chairman only announces what the board has agreed on.
In this case, the IEBC commissioners had to make a majority decision that the presidential election results are credible and a true reflection of what Kenyans voted for. Four out of seven commissioners have told Kenyans that the results being announced by Chebukati are fake and cooked up at Bomas. End of story. Next presidential election in 60 days.
Unfortunately for Ruto who told Kenyans he would never have a handshake after elections, he is desperate for one right now. He knows he is going to be president-elect for less than two weeks and then back to the polls.
He would love if Raila and Martha could accept the fraud in the August 9, 2022 elections and they can babysit him as the president. That is not happening so we go to the elections as soon as we can. This could actually be good for the country so people have to make hard choices.
In many ways, Kenyans are shocked at what just happened in their presidential elections and they are going to make sure it never happens again. They are going to vote on who they want to be their president.
Article 138 of The Constitution says the Presidential votes shall be “tallied & verified” by the Commission and announced by the Chairman. Chairman can only announce what Commission has tallied and verified. He can’t pick results from a magic bag!
The only way Chebukati and Ruto get out of this mess is if they can get those four commissioners and get Ruto to pay them Shs 100 billion each and they go to Bomas and vote to accept the fake results before today elapses so Chebukati can announce an IEBC presidential election results within 7 days from election date. Otherwise, this matter is now in the hands of the Supreme Court.
Adongo Ogony is a Human Rights Activist and a Writer who lives in Toronto, Canada
