As the Azimio One Kenya coalition squabbles over who is to blame for its presidential candidate’s defeat, one official who worked closely with agents stationed at polling stations has spoken out about how the process went wrong.
According to the official, who sought anonymity, the agents were identified, given a down payment, and trained, ready for deployment, only for a top coalition official to present a new list of agents on the eve of election day. That’s when things started to go wrong, adding to a string of setbacks that harmed Mr Raila Odinga’s State House bid yet again.
I was a county liaison officer who collaborated with the Azimio Secretariat. We had 57 people in charge of the election, and they were responsible for managing agents all over the country. We have 47 counties, but large counties like Nairobi and Kakamega required two or three election managers.
We had a good program for the agents, and we had money for them. We had frameworks. We actually hired lawyers to be constituency and county chief agents for the chief agents. We had 290 lawyers serving as constituency chief agents, 47 lawyers serving as county chief agents, and polling agents.
Unlike in previous elections, we were more organized this time, and we covered more ground during the campaigns – more than we did in 2017. The messaging was strong, and the campaign was well-managed overall.
However, many events occurred because our candidate was working with the President. And Azimio hosted 26 parties.
We began with an office in Lavington, but three days before the elections, one of the President’s closest aides offered us another office in Westlands – the entire third floor of the office block. It was the best office, with high-quality equipment.
“We had a good programme before it backfired. We trained the agents and prepared them on how to handle the elections. We even made the down payment of Sh1,500, and we were to pay them Sh5,000 each.
But on the eve of the elections, one of the top officials, a close ally of Mr Odinga, messed up the agents’ plan. It was a scenario where you have trained people, let’s say 1,500 in a constituency, then he comes and asks ‘how did you find these people?’.
Then he gives you a different list and says, ‘Work with these people,’ and it’s hours before the election, you don’t know who they are, you don’t know where they came from, and you’re being told to send letters to untrained people.
We made a mistake with the agents. He (the Odinga ally) did not misappropriate the money because he was not handling the money for the agents, but he came with a different list and instructed us to use that list, despite the fact that we had four hours until the polling stations opened.
How would we have begun to send those letters? How were we supposed to train the newcomers?
Finally, the agents were changed at 2 a.m., leaving insufficient time to ensure all logistics were in place, including having their introductory letters ready and accreditation as agents.
As a result, we did not have presidential agents in some areas, including Kisii, Kajiado, Narok, and some counties in North-Eastern and Coast. How do you get 1,000 people to start going to those constituencies?
Because of those issues, we did not have agents. People are claiming that we did not pay our agents. Who were we going to pay in this scenario? There are two lists: trained and untrained.
So, in the morning, the people we trained went to their polling places but were not allowed to vote because they did not have letters of appointment. Because we did not have agents, obtaining Form 34As became difficult.
We collaborated with the Cabinet Secretary. The State House team spent time at the command center, which is our office in Lavington. Two days before the election, the two, the CS and a PS, would be up until 3 a.m.
When we asked how safe we were, they said, ‘kila kitu kiko sawa’ (everything is okay).
They even claimed we had a parallel tallying system, but never demonstrated it to us.
They only guaranteed us victory in the election.
These people lied to and misled Raila, in my opinion. When I asked him, ‘Mzee, is everything all right?’ he’d say, ‘everything is under control.’ Mzee was given false hope by the PS and the CS. We lost due to our ignorance.
Raila tried in this election, but he was let down by his closest allies, and perhaps he also relaxed, believing the government would play a significant role in this election. When the results were about to be announced at Bomas, I asked the PS who the police officers were working for.
He stated that everything was under control, and that if you have government goodwill, everything should work in your favor.
They were present physically, but their hearts were elsewhere. They all vanished after the results were revealed. Only the CS came once.
Even one of Raila’s closest advisers kept saying ‘pima suti’ (‘make yourself a suit’, ostensibly for Mr Odinga’s swearing-in),” the official concluded.
