The tribunal probing the conduct of four dissenting IEBC commissioners concluded its sittings Tuesday afternoon after outgoing commission chairman Wafula Chebukati made his submissions.
The former electoral agency boss was cross-examined on a myriad of issues touching on the conduct of the August 9 general election up until the point a petition was filed and dismissed by the Supreme Court.
The Justice Aggrey Muchelule-led tribunal will reconvene on February 9 for final submissions and recommendations on whether or not commissioner Irene Masit will be expelled from IEBC.
Masit is the only commissioner whose conduct during the election period was subjected to scrutiny by the tribunal after her colleagues with whom she rejected the poll results —former vice chair Juliana Cherera and commissioners Justus Nyang'aya and Francis Wanderi resigned last year.
While giving his testimony, Chebukati claimed that senior officials including former Inspector General of Police Hillary Mutyambai and vice Chief of Staff Lt General Francis Ogolla tried to convince him not to declare William Ruto as President-elect.
He said they were accompanied by the Principal Administrative Secretary at the Office of President Kennedy Kihara and Solicitor General Kennedy Ogeto.
He said the officials visited him at the national tallying centre and the Bomas of Kenya and that the message was from the National Security Advisory Council (NSAC).
"The message was that if I declared the final election results in favour of Hon William Samoei Ruto, as president-elect, the country is going to burn," Chebukati said.
He said the team who spoke through Tuju informed him and the other commissioners that the country was already experiencing skirmishes as members of the Kikuyu and Luo communities were already fighting.
Chebukati said the former Jubilee secretary general Raphael Tuju told him that if they proceeded and declared Ruto as the president-elect, chaos would erupt and the blood of the dead Kenyans would be on their hands.
"And he said all seven of us the commissioners and myself would be held responsible. This is a national security advisory team, the top organ of the government. And a message of that nature then was outrightly a threat to the independence of the commission," a composed Chebukati told the tribunal.
He said the team told him that if it was not possible not to declare Ruto as the winner of the August 9 polls, then the results should be moderated such that there should have been a run-off between him and his closest rival Raila Odinga of the Azimio la Umoja One Kenya coalition.
"He didn't say how, I also don't know how it would be done."
Chebukati said he asked the other commissioners what their take on the proposal was and commissioner Masit was in favour of the moderation of results.
He claimed that Tuju offered a reward if the demand on moderating the results was met. When asked to explain the nature of the reward, he said he did not encourage him to expound.
