How security agencies tried to sway the poll outcome

The national spy agency tried to interfere with the 2007 General Election. Three instances are given when the National Security Intelligence Service showed its partisan hand.

The commission says “the consistent message, frequently communicated by the NSIS, around the need for State organs and their officers to be neutral during the elections seemed farcical in the face of these interferences.”

However, on the whole, the report is positive on the NSIS saying of all the State security agencies it was, it seems, with the possible exception of the military, best prepared.
Big blow

The first case is an attempt by the NSIS Regional Intelligence Coordinator, Nairobi, to secure Electoral Commission accreditation badges.

In a letter to ECK head Samuel Kivuitu dated December 13, 2007, the officer requests no less than 50 accreditation badges to be issued to NSIS.

But, Mr Kivuitu responded the following day and flatly refused, saying it would be a big blow to the running of the polls.

Said Mr Kivuitu: “It is the first time such a request was ever made by an intelligence agency.

“The acceptance of your request would contravene all known and well established international norms on elections... there can be no basis for spying on its (ECK) electoral duties... for now your application is impossible to accept.”

This also arose during the cross-examination of the ECK chairman when he responded to lawyer Harun Ndubi.

Ndubi: Now, I’m asking that you reflect back on the question of NSIS. Did they also ask you in any of those correspondences to allow their officers either to disguise or to receive badges as officers or observers of the ECK?

Kivuitu: They applied; now this did not come from the headquarters. It came from the Nairobi office.

They applied to become election observers and I wrote back and said they are not qualified. They cannot be election observers and if they were to be taken it would be one of the biggest blows to the administration of elections.

The second instance of interference is what the NSIS described as a “Socio-Economic Political Barometer field study report, December 2007”.

In a December 24, 2007 letter, NSIS boss Michael Gichangi provided survey results giving the relative position of the top three presidential candidates in the polls.

The report says he also included an assessment as to the final results of the December 27, 2007, polls.

Correspondence on the survey appeared to have been arranged outside the Kenya Security Intelligence Machinery framework, the report adds.

Critical dates

The commission found no reference to its work in any other document. The third instance also related to a written communication dated December 6, 2007.