PART ONE: Revisiting the bloodless coup that happened in 2013 with deliberate electoral mismanagement

Unknown to many Kenya voters who spent hours on the queue at polling stations countrywide in 2013, President Uhuru Kenyatta was never elected in free and fair election in 2013.

In a three part series, Kenya Today starts serializing the story of how the system carried out a clinical stage-managed bloodless coup in favour of indicted ICC suspects in 2013 by deliberately mismanaging elections. The story goes into the intrigues that led to Uhuru being declared president, how the Supreme Court threw out CORD’s evidence of rigging and how with the help of the then President Kibaki, how the system conspired to deny Kenyans their democratic right to vote and elect their president.

In wide ranging interviews conducted with former electoral officials, retired government functionaries and senior officers attached to Raila Odinga office reveal disturbing details about how the 2013 Presidential Elections were deliberately manipulated to hand to hand Jubilee administration a first round win by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission – IEBC, in a conspiracy that not even the apparently intimidated Supreme Court could not listen to let alone overturn.

The emerging details point to a shocking scheme hatched by circle or advisors in the outgoing Kibaki regime, some of whom served in the intelligence and civil service, who made exhaustive plans to ensure CORD’s Raila Odinga was never to be declared winner of the polls regardless of how many Kenyans voted in his favour.

But how would two leaders with no solid backing manage to defeat a national movement fronted by Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka? Could they marshall the numbers?

The idea of the “Tyranny of Numbers” was propaganda the was conceived and sold as a winning formula and as a way of justifying the planned rigging. “The tyranny of the numbers was the psychological component of the whole game; and the so was “PEACE” campaign enterprise,” says a member of the civil society

Before the voting started, there had been efforts at infiltrating the IEBC, compromising its staff and manipulating its electronic systems. This was done by state intelligence officials who with the consent of Kibaki, also worked closely with the Uhuru Tena Secretariat.

The first application of technology in the 2013 elections aimed to guarantee the integrity of the voter register through the use of a modern BVR system that was acquired at an astronomical cost of US$95 million. With the voter register being made available at each polling station in two forms, a Biometric Electronic Voter Identification device (EVID or Poll Book) and a printed copy. Both of these methods served the same purpose, to authenticate the identity of each voter before they vote.

The first indication that all was not going to be well in the 2013 elections took place when the expensively acquired BVR incorporating the EVID systems collapsed on as soon all stations opened voting day. The intended mission was to force the IEBC to fall back into the manual identification and thereby open a window for ghost voters to cast ballots. For all intents and purposes, ghost voters cannot visit polling stations and present biometrics to enable them vote.

“Kenyans can remember well that some curious things happened with regard to the so called provisional results that IEBC kept churning out”, says one of the lawyers who handled the CORD petition. “It was a statistical impossibility. Between March 4th – March 7th, Raila Odinga was consistently stuck at 43~44% while Uhuru stayed at 53%. Musalia was stuck at a meagre 2.8% while the margin between Uhuru and Raila consistently remained at between 600,000-700,000 votes. This was impossible considering that results were coming in randomly from polling stations all over Kenya. Yet these figures remained constant”.

The constant gaps maintained at the Bomas Tallying Centre indicated that a secret infiltration of IEBC systems was manipulating computer data with a mathematical formulae calculated to ensure that Uhuru Kenyatta maintain his lead regardless of how the public voted and irrespective of what results returning officers sent back to the headquarters for tallying.

After a confusing Friday 8th March when IEBC postponed announcement of final constituency results till Saturday, a quick operation was put in place to force acceptance of the results amidst anxiety by Kenyans that the vote had been manipulated.

IEBC’s James Oswago reportedly called media houses late in the night for a surprise final announcement of constituency results Friday 12.30am without indicating who had won. Throughout the week IEBC had warned media from declaring anyone the winner.

However 30 minutes later KTN and NTV got a “nod” to call the elections. From there on events moved quickly. At 1.30am KTN flew a banner on their live broadcast indicating Uhuru Kenyatta was the winner. Several stations in surprise followed suit. Kenyans would wake up on Saturday morning to all TVs proclaiming “President Uhuru”, almost 12 hrs before Isaack Hassan finally announced Uhuru’s win on Saturday afternoon.

Based on IEBC’s declaration of presidential results that sharply contrasted with those at the CORD central tallying centre, the CORD coalition made a decision to challenge Uhuru’s election and prepared to submit a petition to the Supreme Court of Kenya. This was where, hopefully, the final test of the general election laid upon where all Kenyans would be follow proceedings to see if the Supreme Court could make a fair decision that would enhance the public’s trust in both the electoral process and the nation’s institutions.

Ahead of the hearing of acrimonious petition at the Supreme Court, analysts, lawyers and political party officials scrutinizing IEBC documents ahead of the submission of the case by the CORD challenging the results were stuck by how technology was also used to aid Uhuru “defeat” Raila Odinga of CORD.

The questions Kenyans want assurance on ahead of the 2017 general elections are simple:

1. Can the IEBC publish a certified Voter Register on the Kenya Gazette ahead of the election?
2. How deep is state security involvement in the electoral process?
3. Is IEBC ready to declare any other candidate as winner other than Uhuru Kenyatta?

In the second part of this exclusive exposè to be published tomorrow, Kenya Today will answer these questions and reveal stunning details of a rigging plot that disenfranchised millions of voters while exposing the country to risk of post-election violence.