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Kitutu Masaba ECK officers not trained

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Published on Monday, 20 June 2011 20:07

Thirty eight presiding officers who took part in the Kitutu Masaba 2007 parliamentary elections, never attended training because they were a replacement of those who failed to report as a result of late notification, a returning officer told Kisii High Court on Thursday.

Lawrence Sempele told the Court that their failure to attend training  followed an ECK commissioner Maugo's alleged nullification of the list of presiding officers and their deputies he had earlier recruited.“After completion and listing of all presiding and deputy presiding officers on December 17, Commissioner Eng Maugo arrived in Nyamira at 6 pm and cancelled recruitment exercise and immediately began it afresh,” Sempele to Justice Milton Makhandia.

In his sworn affidavit, the RO at the same time claimed that one pastor, Leakey Nyamberi, a member of the peace committee announced results at Nyambaria tallying centre against the law. “I was announcing results from every station as I received them but it later came to my attention that pastor Leakey Nyaberi was announcing results in my absence any time I am called out by Eng Maugo but I asked him not to do so because I had delegated the duties to my deputy and assistant to announce the results,” Sempele said.

He said  that, tallying counting and submission of election results was completely erroneous and contradicted instructions from KICC tally centre. He said they were required to give provisional results only for them to be adopted as final results and that the mode of transmission was blogged down with frequent system failure.

The RO revealed that 72 out of 111 polling stations in the constituency were found to have various election anomalies and did not therefore meet the threshold required in order to satisfy the necessary standards for him to declare the results as successful.