Scrap National Tallying Centre to restore trust, Muturi urges court

Former Attorney General Justin Muturi has said that the High Court now has an opportunity to realign the presidential election process, including doing away with the national tallying centre.

This, he said, will be in line with the constitutional vision that was meant to safeguard the sovereignty of every Kenyan, adding that no nation can claim to respect the rule of law while running elections outside the boundaries of its constitution.

“Article 86 (b), 86 (c), 138 (2), 138(3), 138(4), and 138(10) of the Constitution could not be more explicit. They establish that presidential results are tallied, verified, and declared at the constituency level. Once the 290 constituency returning officers complete this process, those results are final. They are binding. They cannot be reopened, re-tallied, or revised at any other centre,” Muturi said in a statement.

He explained that the role of Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Chairperson is strictly clerical, which is to receive the 290 results, add them up, and declare the winner and nothing more.

Muturi stated that the country has, through a series of unconstitutional laws and regulations, built an elaborate structure of national-level verification that has no basis in the Constitution.

He said that the National Tallying Centre, popularised through drama at Bomas, has become the single greatest point of electoral anxiety and mistrust.

“It is a space where results that are final by law are treated as provisional by practice. It is a space where “verification” becomes a euphemism for interference. It is a space where the sovereignty of the people is effectively suspended while political and administrative actors attempt to shape outcomes,” he said.

He said the petition seeks to dismantle the source of that mistrust and asks the High Court to abolish the National Tallying Centre as currently constituted.

It also calls for the removal of all illegal verification powers assigned to the IEBC Chairperson and County Returning Officers in addition to demanding public posting of final results at each constituency and restoration of the Constitution’s decentralised, tamper-resistant model of election results management.

If successful, he said the petition will fundamentally reshape how Kenya conducts presidential elections from 2027 onward.

It will end the long-standing tendency to drag the entire country into one room where political tensions are amplified and constitutional clarity is lost and ensure that every Kenyan can track the presidential results from their constituency without waiting for a distant, chaotic spectacle at Bomas.

“It will eliminate the space where manipulation thrives. And it will finally give life to the intention of the framers: that Kenya’s democracy must be guarded by transparency, decentralisation, and the strict observance of the rule of law,” he explained.

The former Speaker made the remarks against the backdrop of the United Opposition’s move, led by Wiper Patriotic Front leader, Kalonzo Musyoka filed a constitutional petition, seeking to restore the integrity of Kenya’s presidential election process.

Key among the contents of the petition is to challenges the existence and operation of the National Tallying Centre and seeks to invalidate Sections 39, 39(1C), 39(1G) of the Elections Act and Regulation 83(2) of the Elections (General) Regulations.

The United Opposition argues that these provisions have been used to create a parallel system of verification at the national level, which the Constitution did not envision and does not authorise.

“The petition is not merely a technical legal dispute. It speaks to the soul of our democracy and the need to realign our electoral practices with the clear and binding requirements of the Constitution,” Muturi stated.

Last week, Kalonzo led the united opposition in challenging what they described as unconstitutional transmission, alteration and collation of presidential results outside constituency tallying centres, arguing that this has cast doubt on the credibility of past elections.

The opposition is seeking orders compelling the IEBC to undertake critical reforms ahead of 2027, including a declaration that presidential results declared at the constituency level are final, a prohibition against centralized verification of the presidential results and mandatory ballot reconciliation at every polling station.

And yesterday, Muturi said that at the heart of every democratic society lies a simple promise that the will of the people, freely expressed through the ballot, will be protected, faithfully, transparently, and without manipulation.

He said the Constitution was crafted precisely to secure this promise after years of electoral chaos, mistrust, and centralised interference.

“It created a decentralised presidential results system anchored at the constituency, where sovereignty is most accessible to the citizen. Yet 15 years later, the same constitutional safeguards have been eroded, altered, and, in some cases, out rightly ignored,” he said.

The opposition has stated that the IEBC has for many years struggled to earn the trust of Kenyans, which is a concern because in any democracy, the people must have faith that their votes count and that the institutions protecting that vote are beyond reproach.

“The new Commission has not fully escaped this challenge. The way it was appointed, skipping the spirit of consultation and concurrence that the National Dialogue Committee (NADCO) stood for, has left many feeling that IEBC is still not above political influence,” Kalonzo said.

He insisted that the Commission must now roll up its sleeves and prove its independence, work with honesty and transparency, so that every Kenyan can see it serves the people, not the interests of the Executive or any political administration.