NAIROBI, Kenya — Former Cabinet Secretary Moses Kuria has alleged that he and other political figures took steps, including what he described as an intervention involving IEBC servers, to help former President Uhuru Kenyatta avoid a runoff in the 2013 presidential election.
Kuria also revisited a legal battle over rejected votes, saying the court challenge he pursued with former Jubilee officials Denis Itumbi and Florence Jematiah helped secure Kenyatta’s first-round victory.
The claims were made on Inooro FM amid renewed debate over disputed presidential elections following Kenyatta’s recent assertion that the late Raila Odinga won the 2022 election.
Kuria Claims He Helped Kenyatta Avoid Runoff
Kuria said Kenyatta’s 2013 victory was decided by a narrow margin and claimed political allies worked to prevent the election from going to a second round.
“Uhuru knows better what we did for him in 2013 and 2017. He knows the strategy we applied. In 2013, he got the +1 of around six thousand votes,” Kuria said.
He claimed he, Itumbi and Jematiah went to court over the treatment of rejected presidential votes.
“There was the question of the rejected votes, which were to be counted, but Itumbi, Jematiah and I went to court, and it was ruled that the rejected votes should not be counted, and that is how Uhuru won in 2013,” he said.
Kuria said the case was pursued through lawyers Fred Ngatia and Njoroge Regeru.
“In 2017 he won, but in 2013, we were supposed to have a runoff; he knows it. I saved him from the runoff,” he said.
Supreme Court Actually Ruled on Rejected Votes
The historical record confirms that Kuria, Itumbi and Jematiah were among petitioners who challenged the treatment of rejected votes after the 2013 election.
Their Petition No. 3 of 2013 argued that including rejected votes in calculating the presidential threshold had reduced Kenyatta’s percentage and could affect whether he had crossed the 50 per cent threshold.
The Supreme Court subsequently ruled that rejected ballots should not be included when calculating the presidential threshold.
The court held that Article 138(4) of the Constitution referred to valid votes cast, rather than ballot papers that had subsequently been rejected for failing to comply with electoral requirements.
However, the court dismissed the consolidated presidential election petitions and declined to order a fresh election or a recomputation of the result.
Kuria Makes Server Manipulation Claim
Kuria went further by alleging that he and then-Jubilee political ally Davis Chirchir were involved in actions affecting IEBC servers.
“We even did something in the servers to save him; we did it with Davis Chirchir to save him from facing Baba in a runoff,” Kuria said.
The allegation is significantly different from the documented rejected-votes litigation.
The Supreme Court judgment examined several issues surrounding the 2013 election, including the failure of the electronic results transmission system, the subsequent manual tallying process, and allegations of irregularities.
What Happened in the 2013 Election?
The March 2013 presidential election was Kenya’s first under the 2010 Constitution.
IEBC initially announced that Kenyatta had received 6,173,433 votes, while Raila Odinga received 5,340,546 votes.
Kenyatta was declared president-elect after IEBC determined that he had crossed the constitutional threshold required for a first-round victory.
The Supreme Court later addressed the dispute over the meaning of “all the votes cast” and held that rejected ballots did not count towards the 50 per cent-plus-one threshold.
The court also acknowledged that the election was not perfect and that there were irregularities in the electoral data and information capture, but found that the irregularities were not sufficiently substantial to affect the credibility of the election.
Claims Revive 2013 Election Debate
Kuria’s remarks come shortly after Kenyatta reignited debate over the 2022 presidential election, saying he still believes Raila Odinga won that contest.
Speaking during a Jubilee Party National Executive Council meeting in Nairobi, Kenyatta said:
“Na kura akapata, na mimi mpaka wa leo najua ya kwamba yeye ndiye alishinda hiyo kura.”
Kenyatta’s claim was not accompanied by new electoral evidence in the remarks reported.
The Supreme Court had previously upheld William Ruto’s victory after hearing petitions challenging the 2022 presidential election results.
