•Electoral body IEBC said it was carrying out the due diligence of verifying the uploaded form 34As in countercheck with the original ones before starting to collate and announcing results from the constituencies.
As the presidential contenders Raila Odinga and William Ruto continue to battle for their political lives in the ballot tallying, their foot soldiers took to social media spaces with heightened propaganda war to sway perception.
As soon as ballot counting in most polling stations drew near conclusion last evening, social media timelines that are pro Kenya Kwanza team went into a frenzy with random figures that implied a positive outcome for them.
Dennis Itumbi took charge for this exercise, posting numbers that claimed to be the results but not the pictures of form 34A that originate from the stations. Many Twitter handles friendly to that team also shared the numbers.
The intensity of the propaganda war seemed to have dwarfed the Azimio La Umoja One Kenya team as their supporters appeared to draw back from countering the narrative that had been created.
The numbers on display on the television screens even made matters worse for Azimio supporters as they put Deputy president Ruto a head of the former Prime minister.
The aim appeared to be sustaining a public perception of victory for the Ruto-led team. In fact, the war was carried a notch higher when a respected public intellectual allied to the team appeared to back the random numbers by purporting to crunch and give them meaning.
In fact, so intense was the perception creation war that the keyboard warriors even called races like the Lang’ata parliamentary seat, Homa Bay, Nakuru and Kilifi gubernatorial seats among others for their favoured candidates.
The intellectual even claimed that the sampled polling station results could be statistically processed to project who the winner of the presidential contest would be. He called it for William Ruto.
The Azimio team was not to be left behind.
Handles that support ODM leader Raila Odinga’s cause were awash with forms 34A cherrypicked from their friendly zones to suggest that veteran politician was whitewashing the Deputy president.
Twitter handles such as @Disembe, @WehliyeMohamed, @RobertAlai @Paulinenjoroge and @gabrieloguda among others created an impression of a landslide victory for the Azimio boss. The steam seemed to run out when Itumbi and his team checked into town.
On Wednesday, the Azimio supporters seemed anxious and less enthusiastic about the results as the major media stations showed Ruto sustained the lead.
But from midday, key figures in the Azimio campaign led by ODM sectary general Edwin Sifuna and its deputy national chief agent Isaiah Wakindiki seemed to have resuscitated their hopes.
They tweeted some numbers that purported to suggest that Raila was ahead of Ruto and that he had crossed the 50 per cent + 1 mark.
The screenshot of the figures was widely shared on social media pages. The Azimio friendly handles seemed to be back to life after that with all manner of victory claims.
In fact, the Star learnt that the Sifuna's Tweet was strategic as the camp had learnt that the Kenya Kwanza team's bloggers were about to start spewing numbers that paint an Azimio loss.
The Azimio team had even called a press conference at its KICC media centre but called it off after some close to three hours wait by journalists.
Some sources claimed the message their talk heads wanted to pass through their supporters had been effectively passed by the Sifuna Tweet.
Just around the time that Azimio's press availability was to be on, Itumbi again announced a live event by his team on social media to discuss their election results.
He suggested that he already had the final results.
IEBC said it was carrying out the due diligence of verifying the uploaded form 34As in countercheck with the original ones before starting to collate and announcing results from the constituencies.
By 5pm on Wednesday, 98.51 per cent of the forms had been uploaded in its transmission portal.
He said the results in the site were final and that anybody, including the media outlets were free to tally and show the public the results but not declare them.
-Edited by SKanyara