TRANS NZOIA COUNTY. Police officers in Kitale have recovered two voting booklets from a vehicle belonging to the parliamentary aspirant for Saboti on a Jubilee ticket Jonas Kuko and the driver has been held in custody.
Trans Nzoia police commander Lilian Okembo confirmed that the driver was arrested at the Kitale showground where he had parked the Probox Vehicle that had the two booklets of which one was for the Endebess parliamentary seat and the other for the seat of woman representative.
“We have recovered these two full ballot booklets belonging to Jubilee party which were used in the just concluded nominations from a vehicle belonging to Saboti parliamentary aspirant Jonas Kuko and we have arrested the driver of the vehicle who is now here with us,” said the police boss.
Okembo further said that police had confirmed from the party elections officials that the booklets and the rubber stamp recovered belonged to the party and were among the booklets used in the party’s nominations in the county.
She said that the vehicle with registration number KCJ 859M Probox had been parked at the Kitale showground where the tallying of votes for the entire County was being conducted after police got a tip from a member of the public that it had the elections materials.
The police commander told journalists that she had handed over the case to the County criminal investigations boss to do further investigations to dig into the root of the matter and have everybody that was involved in the saga brought to book and prosecuted.
After the incident, three parliamentary nominations losers stormed the Kitale police station to know more on the details of the elections materials recovered and they condemned the incident, citing that their concerns regarding the rigged elections had been justified. They said the Jubilee party should consider their appeals regarding the repeat of nominations in their respective constituencies.
Saboti MP David Wafula Lazaro who lost to Jonas Kuko said that the recovery of the booklets confirms his claims that many polling stations which were situated in his opponent’s stronghold benefitted during the voting exercise. He said in those areas the exercise continued up to 1am yet those in his strongholds were forced to close by 6pm despite having started late in the day.
Joshua Werunga who lost to Abraham Sing’oei in the battle for Kwanza parliamentary seat claimed that his opponent had extra ballot papers in his house. He said he marked and stuffed them in some ballot boxes to balance the number of votes in some polling stations where he had lost.
“In my constituency in Kwanza my opponent who was declared the winner had ballot papers and boxes in his house where he was marking them and stuffing them ready to distribute them to stations where he needed to increase his votes to beat me. You could hear his agents calling and telling him ‘bring 500 papers here we have been beaten, bring 300 more he has beaten us here’ and so on,” said a bitter Werunga who said he was rushing to Nairobi to file a petition for a repeat of the exercise in the constituency.
He described the move as robbery in broad daylight and people were denied their right to get the leaders of their choice and cautioned that if at all the Jubilee leadership does not move in to resolve the matter with a lot of soberness then it is bound to get a backlash from supporters and is likely to get a small number of votes from the County in the 2017 polls.
Endebess parliamentary loser Alwin Sasia also said that his opponent had an advantage over him by having such ballot papers at his disposal and therefore he determined the outcome of the voting results early enough by stuffing such pre-marked papers in the ballot boxes.
He also alleged that some results from some polling stations citing Matumbei had the results announced in a vice versa way whereby his votes were given to his opponent and the few that his opponent had garnered given to him.
“In Matumbei polling station where I scored 610 votes and my opponent scored 41 votes, the results were announced vice versa and I, therefore, called upon the Jubilee elections board to either cancel the results from the polling stations that had disputes or nullify the entire nomination process in the constituency to pave way for a repeat of the exercise,” he said.
He revealed that he had already filed a petition to appeal the results that he rejected as he expressed his displeasure to the Jubilee leadership for having held such a flawed exercise despite the aspirants having spent millions of money and other resources to pay for registration and also campaign for the seats.
