The US has called for free and fair elections after the top contenders in the August polls questioned whether the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) was properly equipped to conduct a credible election.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday said the US is pleased that the electoral agency had approved candidates ahead of the polls.
Blinken also hailed the start of Kenya’s electoral campaigns.
“As I said to Kenyan Cabinet Secretary Omamo last month, the United States stands with Kenyans in support of free, fair, and peaceful elections,” he tweeted.
Blinken’s comments come just days after DP William Ruto alleged there were attempts to rig the election in a meeting with European Union envoys.
During the discussion, the UDA presidential candidate claimed that almost a million voters had been improperly deleted from the voter register, mostly from his strongholds.
“You (EU envoys) have seen in the media that there was an attempt to obliterate names from the IEBC register and almost 800,000 names have somehow disappeared from the registers… It is in the public domain and I think even the IEBC has said they are doing remedial steps,” Ruto said.
Dr Ruto’s claims were, however, dismissed as false by IEBC chair Wafula Chebukati.
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“Let’s not talk about one million names missing, there is no such a thing, it is not there,” Chebukati responded.
Raila Odinga, the Azimio presidential contender, also asked the Commission to ensure that the country’s elections are free and fair.
Raila made an outstanding allegation – without offering any evidence – that some counties had seen an unexplainable one million surge in voter registration.
Meanwhile, the IEBC has postponed the release of the final voter register in order to rectify the preliminary audit results.
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The Chebukati-led agency on Wednesday evening said the voter register will be published by June 20.
Chebukati said the commission got a preliminary audit report with important information that must be evaluated before the final voter register is issued to the public.
“We were supposed to publish the final voter register by June 9. However, due to the implementation of preliminary audit findings, the commission seeks more time to address the findings,” he said.
“246,465 deceased voters, 481,711 duplicate records and 226,143 voters registered with IDs that don’t validly belong to them, 164,269 registered with voter records with invalid identification documents (IDs and Passports) that have to be addressed prior to certification and publishing of the register.”
The commission stated its intentions to publish the final voter register after receiving it from KPMG, a Dutch firm, by June 16.
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