The Computer Society of Kenya

Since 1986

iebcpicDAILY NATION By JOHN NGIRACHU 

THURSDAY AUGUST 31 2017

The electoral agency delayed to give access to its servers to court appointed information technology experts for nearly two days, a report says.

The Supreme Court ordered that IEBC provide access on Monday morning but it was not until 5.30pm on Tuesday that the read-only live access was provided.

The report was signed by ICT experts Prof Elijah Omwenga, Prof Joseph Sevilla who were appointed by the court and Janet Kadenyi, who works for the Judiciary.

It says IEBC attributed the delays to a number of reasons, including the setting up of the Virtual Private Network tunnel to the server, connectivity with the cloud and protection measures that had to be upheld as the election period was still on.

NOT COMPLY

The report says IEBC agreed to provide read-only access at 11am on Tuesday, nearly 12 hours after the court gave the orders.

But it was not until 3.15pm that a partial read-only access was given but with no copy capability.

This was eventually granted way past 5.30pm, the report says.

It says IEBC did not comply with a number of the orders including order on the login trail of and equipment into the IEBC servers.

It says IEBC only provided pre-downloaded soft copies of the logs in a hard disk which was not sufficient.

The experts say IEBC should have demonstrated that the logs came from its servers by allowing read-only access and to copy the logs.

In its conclusion, the report says IEBC did not grant this order.

FORMS

The report on examination of forms used to generate the results of the presidential election revealed that a majority of them were signed by the constituency returning officers and party agents.

The reports by Esther Nyaiyaki on the orders of the court are among the documents that the judges will probably consider as they make a decision on the petition against the re-election of President Uhuru Kenyatta filed by Raila Odinga.

The forms report shows a significant number did not have security features, the report submitted to the Supreme Court by its registrar shows.

Only five were not signed by the returning officers at the constituencies who compiled reports from the polling stations.

From random sampling of 4,120 Forms 34A, the registrar reported that some of them were carbon copies, originals that did not have the IEBC stamp, some were scanned copies and others had not been signed.

SERVERS

On the audit of the servers and the logs from them, the experts appointed by the court reported that most of the orders were obeyed but they faced technical challenges complying with the read-only access live access.

In the report made available Wednesday, Ms Nyaiyaki detailed the process of scrutiny of the Forms 34A and 34B and broke down the findings on the 291 Forms 34B – 290 from the constituencies and one from diaspora.

Regarding the security features, Ms Nyaiyaki said that 236 of the forms had watermarks and 261 had serial numbers, 56 did not have watermarks and 31 did not have serial numbers.

Constituency returning officers had signed 281 forms, five were not signed and 225 had both signatures and stamps. Two had only the stamp.

From her analysis, 260 agents had signed the forms and 32 had no agents’ signatures.

PROVING ASSERTIONS

In 189 of the forms, the section for handing over notes had not been filled while it had been filled in 103 forms.

Only in five forms was the “Take Over” section filled, leaving 287 without that section filled.

While the judges will decide what to make of that information, lawyers representing Mr Odinga and President Kenyatta took the forms as proving their assertions but each of the parties were confident that the scrutiny had proven them correct.

Paul Muite, the lead lawyer for the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, said the law does not require that the forms have security features but the commission had asked for them as a precautionary measure.

“The regulations are clear on what should be contained in the forms,” he said. “Only five forms were not signed but they contain the security features. But the security features is not a requirement.”

SECURITY FEATURES

He could not explain whether it was necessary from the point of view of his clients that all the forms on which the results would be filled have security features and what those features should be.

Mr Orengo argued that: “The logical conclusion is that you cannot ignore those forms. You cannot ignore the report in regard to the forms and the forms are statutory forms. They are there to serve a purpose.”

He had, however, attempted to file Nasa’s own report for consideration and was criticised by Chief Justice David Maraga after Mr Muite and Fred Ngatia, President Kenyatta’s lawyer, asked the court to have them withdrawn.

“Please take back your report. Withdraw your report,” Justice Maraga said.

Mr Ngatia argued that in the final analysis, only the five unsigned forms should be a concern and in those constituencies, among them Nyali and Likoni, Mr Odinga had more votes than President Kenyatta.

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