BY CYRUS OMBATI
Kenya: Officials of the electoral commission are bracing for grilling over the acquisition of electronic voter identification kits and their failure in the March 4 General Election.
Detectives from the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission and a team from the Department of Public Prosecutions will investigate the entire procurement process for the kits to establish if there were any criminal acts warranting prosecution of individuals.
Director of Public Prosecutions Keriako Tobiko selected the team from his office a day after the Supreme Court’s judgement recommended that the procurement of the electronic kits used by IEBC be investigated.
On Wednesday, the commission announced it would hire “an external firm to conduct a detailed evaluation of the entire electoral ICT operations.” The IEBC’s internal probe will take between three and six months to complete, the commission said.
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It added: “The detailed TORs have been developed and include all aspects of Elections Result Transmission, performance of the Electronic Voter Identification Device (EVID), infrastructure capacity, results visualization, skill capability, procurement and other ICT related aspects of the electoral process.”
The statement to newsrooms by IEBC’s Communications and Corporate Affairs manager Tabitha Mutemi, denied reports the commission is split into two rival camps.
She said the IEBC’s Risk and Audit Directorate is reviewing “the status and content of the current voter register” and will share its findings “with key stakeholders”.
Probe order
The IEBC welcomed the Supreme Court call for the commission to be investigated, adding: “As a matter of fact, the Public Procurement Oversight Authority (PPOA) has been investigating the same for the last 14 days with our fullest co-operation.”
The commission said payment of the lawyers it hired to defend it in the Supreme Court cases “shall be strictly guided by the Advocates Remunerations Act”.
This follows reports in a section of the media that the lawyers had slapped the IEBC with a bill running into hundreds of millions.
During the March 4 elections, the electronic voter identification and results transmission systems failed.
Their spectacular collapse was a pillar of the petition in the Supreme Court by the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga against the declaration of Uhuru Kenyatta as Kenya’s fourth President by IEBC. The Supreme Court rejected the petition saying the evidence adduced in court by the former PM could not be sustained.
The DPP investigative team will be led by Senior Prosecutor Kioko Kamula and includes experienced lawyers and crime busters.
EACC was already investigating allegations of impropriety in the tendering and supply of the Biometric Voter Registration kits to IEBC before Tobiko’s intervention.
Letter to EACC
“I am aware your commission is already undertaking investigations into allegations concerning the tender for the supply and delivery of Biometric Voter Registration solution, kits and matching solution,” said Tobiko in the letter to anti-graft agency’s Chief Executive Officer Halakhe Waqo.
The BVR kits tender was embroiled in controversy even before they were delivered to IEBC by their French manufacturer last year.
The tender to supply the kits was cancelled by the IEBC last year following public uproar over the manner in which it was awarded.
The IEBC complained at the time that it might have reverted to the old manual registration system because time was running out after the tender was cancelled.
The Kriegler Commission appointed to look into the electoral processes that led to post-election violence after the outcome of the December 27, 2007 presidential election was disputed condemned the manual register and recommended that consequent registrations be backed up electronically.
The Commission said the manual register was prone to manipulation, multiple registration and even cases where “dead” people were allowed to vote.
While the BVR kits were successfully deployed, the EVIDs that were supposed to work with them failed in most polling stations on Election Day forcing the Commission to revert to printed registers to identify voters.
The electronic tallying and transmission system of results also failed and IEBC had to wait for Forms 34, 35 and 36 from various polling stations to be brought to the national tallying centre in Bomas in order to relay the final results of the presidential vote.
In its 113-page judgement, the Supreme Court on Tuesday said: “There is evidence that the technologies were used at the beginning but they later stalled and crashed.”
The judges said misunderstandings and squabbling among IEBC officials during the procurement process might have led to failure to assess the integrity of the electronic systems before the elections.
The judges said there was evidence that the technologies were used in the electoral process at the beginning, but they later stalled and crashed. The judges, however, ruled that the failure of the technology did not compromise the outcome of the presidential election.
Raila had claimed the failure of technology in the electoral process had a major bearing on the results of elections, as it was not possible to determine the exact number of registered voters who cast their ballots.
