NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 1- The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has dismissed claims by petitioners in the presidential election that its system was hacked and crucial data altered.
Lawyer Eric Gumbo said the claims that the system was hacked and some of the Forms 34As uploaded in favour of President-Elect William Ruto is laughable.
He challenged the petitioners to present evidence to prove their claim, insisting that all the forms had security features and can be matched with physical ones delivered by Returning Officers to the National Tallying centre.
“The entire network through which election results are transmitted is secured with double firewalls… for somebody to intercept, they must have information on voter turnout of that day of every polling station,” Gumbo told judges on day two of proceedings of a consolidated petition in the Supreme Court.
The consolidated petition of Azimio presidential candidate Raila Odinga and eight others want the Supreme Court to nullify the presidential election results declared by IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati, on claims that they were manipulated in favour of the Deputy President.
Gumbo told the court that Form 34A has 8 identified security features including watermarks, UV potential to avoid the manipulation of the original document.
Gumbo also explained that by the time the Returning Officer returned the physical 34 As to the National Tallying center at Bomas of Kenya, the image had already been uploaded in the portal, and all agents were once again presented with an opportunity to verify the forms.
“Agents are like our spouses. You choose your own. You choose the one you trust and if you choose one that you don’t trust, then you can’t blame anyone, if you choose one who doesn’t understand why you assigned them that responsibility, then you can’t blame anyone,” Gumbo stated.
Gumbo further submitted that the use of technology in the elections by IEBC was at 99 per cent successful.
“If out of 46,000 KIEMS kits, only 200 do not work, would I say I have failed? The mathematical representation of this gives us (IEBC) more than 99% success rate. In our view that achieved the constitutional imperatives contemplated under Article 86,” he said.
On the involvement of Venezuelans to hack the system, Gumbo explained that the officials who were arrested at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) were staff of Smartmatics company, the ICT firm retained by IEBC.
On Wednesday, petitioners asked the court to nullify the presidential election on grounds that it was not conducted within the law.
The judges started hearing respondents in the petition Thursday and are expected to retreat at the weekend to write a judgement which is due on Monday.
