Azimio’s lead counsel, Senior Counsel, James Orengo, has claimed that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Chaired by Wafula Chebukati has denied Azimio La Umoja agents access to its servers.
After the disputed 2017 presidential results, IEBC Chair Wafula Chebukati defied the Supreme Court’s orders to open the election servers.
Speaking during the hearing at the Supreme Court on Wednesday, August 31, Orengo alleged that the officials at the IEBC headquarters at the Anniversary Tower denied them entry on grounds that they needed authorization, despite the Supreme Court issuing express orders a day before.
“My lady Chief Justice and members of the court, we are also having difficulties with the orders relating to the inspection of the servers. We have been given restricted access only to the results transmission system. It is established that IEBC has eight servers yet we have access to one only.”
“We have written to the registrar of the court in the hope that this court solves this matter as quickly as possible,” Orengo lamented.
IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati
Justice Isaac Lenaola, however, responded by stating that the exercise was ongoing by the time the apex court took a lunch break. He, however, promised to follow up on the matter.
“We are following up on the question but as far as we know, the exercise is continuing, and should there be an issue later in the day or tomorrow morning, we shall receive a report.
“By the time we got out of here, the exercise had commenced and there was an agreement on how to access the servers that were given and the issue of cloning is being addressed. Let’s leave it for now. We are aware of that,” Justice Lenaola stated.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday, August 30, ordered the IEBC to give the applicants supervised access to any servers at the National Tallying Centre for storing and transmitting voting information which is forensically imaged to capture a copy of Form 34C which is the total votes cast.
Julie Soweto, part of the petitioner’s legal team
IEBC was also directed to avail partnership agreements with its technical partners, list of users, trail, and admin access to provide clarity on the IEBC systems and their usage for review and verification.
Nonetheless, the orders were subject to any security-related issues thereof. The directives were among the orders issued on scrutiny and recount of ballots.
Other than the two orders, IEBC was asked to provide the applicants with copies of its technology system security policy comprising but not limited to password policy, password matrix, owners of system administration passwords, system users and levels of access, and workflow chats for identification, tallying, transmission, and posting of portals and any API’s that had been integrated and the list of human interface and controls for such intervention.
The case continues.
