NAIROBI, Kenya Sep 2 – A lawyer representing Azimio presidential candidate Raila Odinga has tabled evidence in the Supreme Court to prove that a Venezuelan was uploading Forms 34A on the IEBC public portal, in a shocking live demo on the last day of the presidential petition hearing.
Lawyer Julie Soweto questioned the role of the Venezuelan she identified as Jose Camargo, saying he “determined the final results of the presidential results.”
During Friday’s proceedings, Soweto took the seven-judge bench through some of the forms on the public portal, including one from a polling station in Murang’a county that had the Venezuelan’s name on the top left corner.
“My Lords, you can see we are not making up the hacking story, you can see for yourselves and we are saying this is the person who determined the final outcome of the presidential election,” she said of the form from Kangema’s Muguru polling station.
In some of the forms demonstrated, Soweto sought to identify what she described as “massive interference” with calculations that did not match the votes cast, registered voters and those allocated to each presidential candidate.
“If we had more time, I could have demonstrated more on the massive interference that was done on the public portal,” she said, before an interjection from President-Elect William Ruto who objected to the demonstration.
Chief Justice Martha Koome however, overruled him, saying Soweto was responding to a question from the judges on how the alleged interference was executed.
Lawyer Paul Mwangi, for Raila, said Camargo was one of the three Venezuelans arrested by detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) on charges of planning to interfere with the election.
“We believe that these are the fingerprints of one of the suspects of the theft of this election,” Mwangi submitted.
During the live demonstration in court, lawyer Soweto wondered how the Venezuelan was able to upload forms on the public portal.
“We were told that the foreigners left, we were told that they didn’t access the server, then why is the name Jose Camargo appearing on a form on IEBC portal,” Soweto submitted.
She further told the court that they are in possession of evidence showing that over 11,000 Forms 34A were transmitted through the same IP address contrary to the electoral commission’s assertion that each polling station was to transmit separately.
She listed Bungoma, Mt. Elgon, Chesikaki, Psongoywo Primary School, Nyeri, Nyeri Town, Gatitu/Muruguru: Thunguma Primary School – stream 03 as some of the areas where a similar IP address was used to transmit forms.
“How can the same KIEMS kit transmit from two different locations; Mt. Elgon and Nyeri?… Because of time I cannot demonstrate the thousands of forms we have identified with the same issue,” she stated.
Soweto also questioned why all forms that are on the IEBC portal are in black and white, and at what point they were altered from JPEG to PDF.
“The original form 34A is a coloured form that should have appeared at the national tallying center, if transmitted in one transaction, as a coloured form. All forms in the IEBC portal are in black and white,” she said.
