Moses Kuria Claims He Helped Rig 2013, 2017 Elections

Former Cabinet Secretary Moses Kuria has made fresh and detailed claims about Kenya’s 2013 and 2017 presidential elections, alleging that he and other individuals played a role in securing victories for former President Uhuru Kenyatta.

Kuria made the claims while discussing the country’s disputed electoral history, including allegations surrounding the 2013 presidential contest between Kenyatta and the late Raila Odinga.

According to Kuria, a legal battle over rejected votes was among the strategies used to prevent the election from going to a runoff.

“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. 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, otherwise, he had not won,” Kuria said.

He further claimed that the election would have proceeded to a second round had the rejected votes been included in determining whether Kenyatta had crossed the constitutional threshold.

“In 2017 he won, but in 2013, we were supposed to have a runoff; he knows it. I saved him from the runoff. I went to court through our lawyer Fred Ngatia and Njoroge Regeru. If we had not gone to court to challenge the legality of rejected votes, Uhuru would have gone for a runoff,” he added.

Kuria also alleged that the IEBC’s electronic systems were interfered with during the 2013 election.

“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, so it was not easy in 2013,” he claimed.

The allegations revive long-running questions about the integrity of Kenya’s elections. Kuria has previously made claims about election rigging, including in 2022, when the IEBC said it would investigate his remarks.

The latest allegations remain claims by Kuria and should not be treated as independently established facts.