Nairobi-There was a scare at the Kenya’s national tallying centre in the capital, Nairobi, that briefly disrupted the ongoing vote verification exercise on Friday afternoon.
Agents of presidential candidates and political parties were engaged in what appeared to be a confrontation in the area where verification is taking place prompting the intervention of electoral commission officials.
Sources say the commotion was triggered when agents from one political coalition raised alarm over a suspicious laptop device that was being used to key in data by one of the presidential agents.
Party agents are currently holed up in a meeting with electoral commissioners.
The device has been confiscated by security officers as they await the verdict of the ongoing meeting.
Tension was high at the centre as party delegates and observers tried to make sense of what was going on. The verification exercise has since resumed and situation is calm.
Meanwhile, Kenyan’s electoral head has admitted he feels the process of verifying results from Tuesday’s vote is taking too long.
Wafula Chebukati’s comments come nearly three days after polls closed, with the outcome of the presidential election still not known.
He blamed party agents for slowing things down as results sent digitally are matched to paper originals.
Media tallies show the two leading candidates – Raila Odinga and William Ruto – are neck and neck.
But it is only the electoral commission that can declare the winner – and it has seven days to do so.
Earlier the electoral chief emphasized there was no need to panic when seeing differences in tallying numbers as they would look similar in the end.
“The results are from the same public portal; the approach [of each broadcaster] is different,” he explained.
Source: BBC
