The Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) on Monday, August 8, sued the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) over its decision to use statutory declaration forms on its online public portal.
KHRC filed a suit in Court under a certificate of urgency to compel commission to use Forms 34A & 34B to show constituency in presidential results available on IEBC's online public portal.
In the petition, the Rights Commission with another lobby group sued the electoral body, IEBC, its Chairman Wafula Chebukati, and the Attorney General.
“The petitioners being a non-governmental organization that campaigns to create a culture in Kenya where human rights and democratic culture are entrenched and whose address of services for purpose of the petition,” KHRC stated
The Rights body stated that IEBC erred during the streaming of the 2017 presidential results by delaying to publish Form 34A on the portal. The body also held that IEBC uploaded forms that were incomplete as they did not include all the necessary information.
The 2017 election was marred by irregularities in the use of statutory declaration forms creating the ground that made the Supreme Court nullify President Uhuru Kenyatta's win.
The Rights Commission also blamed the Chebukati-led agency for the nullification of the 2017 results by closing the portals immediately after the elections making it impossible to verify the credibility of the Presidential result.
Chebukati had previously stated that the commission would facilitate the access of form 34A to all presidential agents claiming that it will not use form 34B in the polls.
The electoral body and agents of the presidential candidates, later on, reached a consensus that the commission will only use form 34A in collecting and tallying the results in the election. However, form 34B will only be used to record the tallied results.
Further, the commission is required by the election laws to paste a copy of form 34A results at the door of the polling station, therefore making form 34A tally the final result of the election.
However, during this year's general election, the IEBC commissioner will rely on the results contained in Form 34Bs (scanned and hard copies) to tabulate the results from all the 290 constituencies and fill them in Form 34C, before declaring the winner of the presidential election during the day.
Chebukati exuded confidence that the electoral body was ready to deliver a free, fair, and credible election.
