The National Super Alliance (NASA) has accused the electoral agency of signing a Sh2 billion secret deal with OT-Morpho.
NASA says the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) signed the Sh2.4 billion contract on September 28.
The French IT firm is expected to provide electoral management system for the new presidential elections on October 26.
In a statement, NASA National Campaign Chairman Musalia Mudavadi said the contract was single-sourced and over-prized.
The Opposition initially called for the audit of the operations of OT-Morpho and the role they played in the bungled August 8 presidential election as an irreducible minimum before they participate in the repeat poll.
And yesterday, Mudavadi noted that IEBC and the French firm “had pulled another expensive fraud on Kenyan tax payers even before the IEBC and OT-Morpho could address numerous questions regarding irregularities and illegalities in the August 8 elections.”
Colossal sum
According to Mudavadi, the contract is about Sh1.4 billion less than what IEBC spent for the August polls.
“The Sh2.4 billion contract for an election involving only one position and two candidates is not only outrageous but an act of fraud, deliberate theft of public funds and bribery,” Mudavadi said.
“Furthermore, we are aware the Sh2.4 billion awarded sum is way above the Sh800 million that the IEBC technical committee recommended.”
The NASA National Campaign Chair said that Kenyans should be excused if they were to conclude that the offensive amounts are being paid as a bribe to OT-Morpho for a shady job of using technology to tilt elections in favour of Jubilee in the same way it did last month.
He said this was fortified by the fact that Attorney General Prof Githu Muigai and Treasury Secretary Henry Rotich approved the colossal sum.
“Of course, part of the huge sum may as well find its way to IEBC and senior Government officials as happened in the Chickengate scandal,” Mudavadi said.
The NASA principal observed that the new contract comes even before the French government, which is a shareholder in OT-Morpho, responds to the issues NASA raised about the unethical conduct of the firm in Kenya.
Until the French absolve themselves, Mudavadi said, the award further confirms that OT-Morpho was firmly part and parcel of a criminal enterprise that has hijacked the Kenyan electoral system with the sole aim of profiteering and frustrating the democratic ambitions of the people of Kenya.
“NASA objects firmly to this criminality. sWe demand that IEBC and OT-Morpho explain to Kenyans how the figure was arrived at,” he said.
