Nairobi News

Uasin Gishu governor Jackson Mandago wants the Independent Electoral Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to allow Kenyans to tally the results during the August polls but bar anyone from announcing the final results.

The county boss notes that there is nothing wrong with the tallying of the results but cautioned against announcing results since the mandate rests with the electoral agency.

“A citizen who is concerned about the specific results can tally the results from his house. I don’t see any problem as an interested citizen,” he explained.

“What the IEBC should be saying is that you can have a tallying center but you don’t have powers to announce the results because some people may use that to cause confusion.”

He observes that since all the agents for the candidates will sign the declared results at polling stations or the Form 34 C, the forms will be uniform hence no problem tallying the results.

“Some Kenyans can be mischievous and declare themselves the winners before the final results are declared which I believe that the IEBC was trying to caution against,” added the governor.

At the same time, the county governor blamed the ‘handshake’ for slowing some of the county projects such as the housing program in the county.

“We had the housing agenda and as a county, we were to get 2500 housing units and each unit was to create the eight jobs directly. We lost focus because when we had a handshake, the focus shifted away from the agenda,” he explained.

He also claimed the Azimio presidential candidate Raila Odinga, despite being the champion of devolution, failed to push for an increase in budgetary allocation to 35 percent or timely release of funds to the devolved units through the ‘handshake’.

He made the remarks after he gave his last state of county address before the county assembly on highlighting achievements during his two-term tenure.

The governor is vying for the senate seat come August polls on United Democratic Alliance party, having completed 10 years as the governor.