Inside Ruto’s Heated Sunday Response Clarifying Banned Election Transmission

President William Ruto has fired back at his political rivals over claims that the government is planning to ban the livestreaming of election results.

The Head of State issued a fiery, no-nonsense response on Sunday, October 25, 2026, during a church service.

Speaking at the AIC Kasina Church in Mwingi town, Kitui County, Ruto explicitly dismissed the allegations as “nonsense” and “fake news”.

The sudden national uproar erupted after the National Assembly debated the high-stakes Elections (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill, 2024.

Initial drafts of the bill sparked intense public panic after proposing to scrap the mandatory legal requirement for the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to livestream polling results.

Opposition leaders and civic groups quickly claimed that the changes were part of a secret plan to rig the 2027 General Election.

However, Ruto insisted that his administration has absolutely no intention of blocking citizens from accessing real-time election outcomes.

He aggressively questioned why anyone would want to stop the transmission of results, stating that rapid transparency benefits the entire nation.

The President fiercely accused opposition chiefs of being politically bankrupt and relying on heavy propaganda to cause unnecessary panic.

He compared the current political standoff to the chaotic 2024 Finance Bill protests, claiming that rivals are misusing Kenyan youth once again.

To set the record straight, the National Assembly clarified that Clause 22, which sought to delete the livestreaming framework, was officially dropped from the final bill.

Therefore, the legal duty of the IEBC to maintain a public mechanism for real-time live results transmission remains intact.

Furthermore, the newly amended bill strictly mandates the IEBC to transmit presidential election results electronically within exactly two hours of declaration.

The commission must also upload scanned Form 34As directly to its online public portal for verification.

Candidates, party agents, and independent election observers retain the full legal right to record and document the tallying processes physically.

Ruto urged the public to read and fully comprehend legislative documents before joining mass protests or rejecting them blindly.

The high-stakes bill now returns to the Senate for formal concurrence and potential mediation before heading to the President for final assent.

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