The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) chairperson Wafula Chebukati and his vice chair, Juliana Cherera, made their first public appearance on Monday, August 22, a week after the Bomas of Kenya drama.
The full commission was meeting candidates in the Kakamega and Mombasa gubernatorial elections that were suspended.
While appearing at the Bomas of Kenya, they sat side-by-side as they listened to concerns raised by the candidates and fielded questions.
Chebukati announced that the suspended elections would be held on August 29.
Both Chebukati and Cherera sat pensively during the meeting, with their postures changing from time to time - their body languages spoke louder.
This marked the first time that all commissioners held the same meeting since the declaration of the presidential election results.
The discord and subsequent fallout within the commission unfolded on Monday, August 15, after Cherera and three other commissioners, Wanderi, Nyang'aya and Masit, held a parallel meeting at Serena hotel.
While addressing the press, the four commissioners distanced themselves from the presidential results announced by Chebukati.
The commissioners labelled the final tallying process as opaque as they faulted the chairperson for locking them out of the verification exercise.
"We are not at the Bomas of Kenya because we cannot take ownership of the results that are going to be announced because of the opaque nature which these results have been handled," Cherera stated.
Cherera later released a detailed statement, arguing that Chebukati gave them the wrong aggregation of results.
She argued that the total calculation resulted to 100.01 percent hence giving an erroneous tally.
Further, she pointed out that Chebukati left out the total number of registered voters, voters cast and rejected votes while announcing the results.
In a rejoinder, Chebukati claimed that the four commissioners were hell-bent on forcing a re-run, which led him to refuse to yield to their demands and hence proceeded to declare the results.
"The alleged 0.01 per cent increase in the Presidential Election results raised by the four Commissioners namely Juliana Cherera, Francis Wanderi, Justus Nyang'aya and Irene Masit, is false and misleading."
"This is the most transparent election that the Commission has ever held. All results, Form 34As, were uploaded in real-time and are available in the public portal," the IEBC chair noted.
