AfriCOG have expressed “utter disappointment” in this year’s election, saying IEBC failed to perform in line with the constitution.
In a statement issued at their office in Lavington, Nairobi, on Monday, executive director Gladwell Otieno said the poll was “neither free, fair, transparent or regular”.
“It is very hard to burglar-proof a house when the burglars are already inside,” she said in the address that touched on a raid of the premises by police officers and KRA agents.
More on this: [VIDEO] Police, KRA raid AfriCOG offices after Fazul’s shutdown threat
The lobby filed a petition after the disputed March 4, 2013 contest between Uhuru Kenyatta and Opposition chief Raila Odinga but it was thrown out.
There has been speculation that the raid took place to keep the organisation from filing a petition on the August 8 election.
NASA chiefs led by Raila Odinga have filed a petition at the Supreme Court.
Otieno said the government spent a lot of money purchasing equipment meant to boost the election’s credibility but that “progress is barely visible”.
“We have the same amount of failures that we experienced in 2013, even with the new technology. We have noted numerous irregularities during the whole election process,” she said.
“The 2013 election was not fair and credible. Electronic systems to prevent irregularities failed, IEBC did not have an official voter register and unfortunately in 2017 they did not have it either.”
The executive director further noted voter registration failures in some areas, which left equipment unable to recognise some members of the public.
Otieno also noted returning officers complained that their laptops crashed or that they forgot the passwords and ended submitted results by phone.
“They did not offer equal conditions and opportunities for all candidates to take part. IEBC failed to allow political parties to inspect all the facilities being used in the elections,” she added.
“They also failed in protecting ballot boxes after elections so as to prevent them from being tampered with.”
Otieno also said agents were locked out of tallying centers on allegations of being rowdy after perceived system failure.
She said they did not witness counting and cannot assert that the results presented were true.
“Forms for presidential, governors and MPs results contained different numbers of registered voters.The process did not offer equal conditions and opportunities for some citizens, due to the unknown delay in some areas, to have access to polling stations and to vote.”
The AfriCOG boss further said results announced by the electoral agency did not match those of a single candidate, numbers which she termed “strange, different or higher”.
“The IEBC’s portal displayed results of some areas even before the returning officers had transmitted the results,” she said.
“There was a suspicious constant graph of results from the beginning of the transmission which is quit strange if the results were being sent randomly all over the country.”
On August 16, the High Court suspended the crackdown on AfriCOG on allegations of non-compliance and illegal operations.
AfriCOG and seven rights activists moved to court to stop the NGOs board from interfering with its operations.