The Supreme Court on Monday, ruled that the technology deployed by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission IEBC met the required standards of a free, credible and justifiable elections.
While delivering the ruling at the Milimani Court, the seven judge bench led by Chief Justice Martha Koome noted that IEBC deployed technology in accordance with the law and allowed the manual system to be used in areas where the KIEMS kits failed.
“We are not persuaded by the allegation that the technology deployed by the IEBC failed the standard of Section 86 (A) of the constitution on integrity, verifiability and transparency for the following reasons.
“Whereas it is true that the KIEMS kits failed in 235 polling stations 86,889 voters were granted the right to vote manually and the requisite Form 32A were duly filed. This happened successfully in Kibwezi constituency and part of Kakamega County,” said Koome.
IEBC had denied claims by the main petitioner, Raila Odinga that its system had been infiltrated to allow for original forms 34A to be deleted and replaced with altered forms which were uploaded to the portal.
During his submissions before the court, advocate Mahat Somane accused Raila of forging the forms which he presented as evidence.
“In Ndaina polling station, they claimed that their agent provided them with a form which was different from what is in the portal. If you look at the form attached to the portal and even the one the petitioner submitted, there was no agent at the polling station,” he stated
On their part, Raila’s legal team questioned the role of the Venezuelans in deciding the final outcome of the election.
However, the commission defended their log-ins, stating that they were employees of Smartmatic and were tasked with maintaining the system- an access that was only granted before the election date.
However, in her counterclaim, Julie Soweto, representing Odinga, told the court that Jose Camargo had access to the system during the election, displaying a form 34A whose metadata bore the foreign national’s name.
Soweto argued that the form from Gacharagu Primary School polling station in Muguru ward, Murang’a County, was evidence enough that he might have infiltrated the system in a bid to alter the results by switching the contents of the court
By Rodgers Oduor
