On the opening day of the trial for the presidential election petition, attorneys for the petitioners have leveled accusations that cast doubt on the IEBC’s use of technology for the elections on August 9.
Raila Odinga and Martha Karua, the petitioners, contend that the IEBC’s technology was polluted, manipulated, and compromised.
They contend that as a result, the outcomes announced by Wafula Chebukati, the commission’s chairperson, were neither impartial or indicative of the will of the people.
Odinga and Karua assert that the August 9 technology lacked confidentiality, integrity, and security through their attorney, Senior Counsel Philip Murgor.
The attorney claimed that unauthorized users gained access to the IEBC servers.
It was discovered that there was a gang of roughly 50 individuals that had access to the IEBC’s ICT systems someplace, someway, in the Karen area. Before being uploaded to the public portal, these findings were being intercepted, Murgor informed the Supreme Court.
Murgor detailed hacker intrusions into servers and unauthorized access to the IEBC system by both known and unidentified users.
The three Venezuelans’ situation also came up, and Murgor informed the court that they were complicit in the malpractice.
“The chairman of the IEBC cannot take the statement by the DCI regarding the Venezuelans lightly and wish it away,” he stated.
Murgor provided the court with many affidavits, including those of John Githongo and George Njoroge, to support his claims.
“Githongo discusses the unauthorized entry into the system and the falsification of the presidential election results in his affidavit. Githongo presents video proof showing how a young person simply and unlawfully gains access to the IEBC system.
According to Murgor, “John Githongo provides additional actual logs that were used to show access to the system in his second affidavit.”
In the case of Njoroge, he also asserted access to the IEBC system.
“The existence of commission staff [members] who were not formally mandated and gazetted to participate in the election process was illegal, malicious, and unauthorised.
The existence of commission staff [members] who are not formally mandated and gazetted to participate in the electoral process was illegal, harmful, and unauthorized. But they did have access to the IEBC’s transmission network. One of them is the personal assistant to Wafula Chebukati.
According to him, there was proof that the forms had been downloaded, converted, and then updated with fresh data.
Njoroge’s report, according to Murgor, asserts that the presidential election results were tallied in reverse.
“There was abundant evidence of backtracking in the presidential election. This indicates that a Form 34C with the desired outcome was developed, and that what thereafter appeared to happen was a process of going backwards to amend Forms 34 B and 34A to produce the desired result.
This continued to take place. The system was clearly only intended to move ahead, not backward, according to Murgor.
Before the decision was made, a Form 34C, according to Murgor, was produced.
“A Form 34C had already been generated as of August 12th, 2022 at 15:48 hours. Whose job was it in that system to produce a Form 34C? The official announcement was due in two days, he said.
The petitioners also assert that IEBC employees were given access to the system despite not having been gazetted for limited and accountable access.
“In particular, Dickson Kwanusu, the personal assistant to IEBC Chair Wafula Chebukati, is given access. While we might not be able to see the prints of
Murgor cited data from other forensic expert studies as proof.
Some of the data presented suggests that some foreigners received “super administrator” rights during the counting process. Additionally, he claimed that a total of six unauthorized users had been using the system.
“Four IEBC commissioners have explicitly said that they were kept in the dark and that Chebukati, one individual, controlled the system. The head of ICT, [Commissioner Justus] Nyang’aya, expressed disbelief that foreigners were in charge of the system and had access before, during, and after the election.
The IEBC’s use of technology for the 2022 General Election fully fell short of the requirements for a safe, transparent electronic voting system, producing results that are impossible to verify, incorrect, and invalid.
