Nasa misleading the public about election results: IEBC
IEBC Vice Chairperson Consolata Nkatha Maina inspects ballot papers that arrived on October 21, 2017. She has said Nasa has misled the public on the outcome of the August 8, 2017 presidential election. PHOTO | FRANCIS NDERITU | NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
- Nasa has accused the IEBC of irregularities in the August 8 election and says it won the presidential poll.
- But IEBC says the Opposition was misleading the public.
- It says its servers were secure and there was no evidence of hacking.
- It also says that the Nasa agent had access to results transmission, despite giving the impression that it did not.
Nasa has deliberately made statements to mislead the public on how the electoral body handled the August 8, 2017 presidential election, the IEBC has warned.
The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) on Monday sought to set the record straight regarding the Opposition’s claims that it tolerated electoral malpractices, which consequently denied Nasa principal Raila Odinga the presidential victory.
ELECTION WINNER
In a statement to newsrooms, Vice Chairperson Connie Nkatha Maina said the IEBC tallied the presidential results and declared Mr Uhuru Kenyatta the winner with 8,203,290 (54.27%) votes while Mr Odinga came second with 6,762,224 (44.74%) votes.
She said these numbers were tallied from the Forms 34B received from the constituency returning officers (CROs) from the 290 constituencies and the diaspora.
The IEBC also provided a secure access to the results transmission server to all agents of presidential candidates, to enable them view the results as they were being received from polling stations countrywide, she said.
The Nasa agent made 54 attempts to log in, failed 20 times and had 34 successful log-ins, while the Jubilee Party agent made 24 attempts to log in, failed 14 times and had 10 successful log-ins.
“It is very clear that Nasa agent had the highest number of successful log-ins. This is a fact that Nasa has always deliberately avoided to inform Kenyans. Instead, they continuously mention the names of the agents of their political opponents to give an impression that only their opponents were given this access,” Ms Nkatha in the statement.
COMPLIANCE
She added that in compliance with the Supreme Court Order to access the servers in the first 2017 presidential petition, IEBC made efforts to expedite the order as soon as it was practically possible.
“However, it required collaboration by different experts, some of whom were based in Europe where the IEBC cloud servers were hosted. This process took time and the 48 hours given to comply with the order were certainly not adequate.” Ms Nkatha said.
By the time the secure link was established, there was little time left for the court experts to report back to the Registrar and the Supreme Court.
“At no time did the Commission deliberately prevent access to the server. Indeed, once a secure connection was established, the server continued to be available and accessible until mid-October 2017 when the facility was redirected for use in the fresh presidential election,” Ms Nkatha said.
SECURITY
She said allegations of hacking of the RTS emerged during the August 8, 2017 election, but the IEBC denounced this after establishing the evidence being relied on was fake logs from a Microsoft platform as opposed to the Commission’s Oracle database.
An independent audit conducted on behalf of OT-Morpho by Verizon, a reputable international telecommunication company, showed that there was no evidence of hacking of the RTS as used for the August 8, elections.
She said the ICT infrastructure deployed in the election met high international standards of security.
The commission’s vice chair denied claims of results forms being deleted from the server, and further stated that IEBC had received all the forms at the time of declaring the August 8, presidential election winner.
Ms Nkatha said IEBC is committed to strengthening democracy in Kenya. And while it invites criticism, such arguments must be based on fact and goodwill to improve the electoral process.
