On 2018-11-22, IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati rejected a petition by former Kakamega senate aspirant Seth Panyako seeking his removal from office over the 2018 Kakamega senatorial election.
Chebukati said the complaint was “incurably defective” and insisted the commission had not manipulated the outcome. He maintained that the results announced by returning officers and later gazetted were the valid tallies.
In his response to a report first carried by The Star, Chebukati also pointed to an earlier court outcome in which a similar challenge was thrown out and Panyako was fined Sh3 million. He said the High Court had already found that the complete results relevant to the dispute were those declared by the returning officer in form 38C, not the electronic figures said to have appeared on the IEBC portal.
Chebukati further accused Panyako of trying to blackmail the commission and interfere with its efforts to recover litigation costs from him.
Panyako, who serves as secretary general of the Kenya National Union of Nurses, had petitioned Parliament to remove the IEBC chairman, accusing him of irregularly altering the Kakamega senatorial results. His petition was received by the Clerk of the National Assembly on Monday last week and was expected to go before the Justice committee.
The unionist alleged that Chebukati falsely and maliciously gazetted the results in favour of Senator Cleophas Malala. He said the returning officer had declared Malala the winner with 228,432 votes, but that Chebukati later gazetted him at 258,178 votes, a difference of 29,746 votes.
Panyako also claimed that the gap between the two leading candidates was increased to more than 59,126 votes without justification and in breach of the law.
