IEBC vs Supreme Court: Confusion over full access to election servers

Uncertainty has ensued on whether the Independence Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has facilitated the access of eight servers as ordered by the Supreme Court on Tuesday, August 30.

On the second day of the presidential election petition hearing, Lawyer Philip Murgor, who is representing Raila Odinga and Martha Karua told the court that IEBC is yet to give them full access to the servers.

“I wish to report that as of this morning nothing has changed, IEBC continue to refuse to provide the forensic image of all the 8 servers. Of those 8 servers, IEBC are providing only limited access to server number 5,” the Senior Counsel said.

However, Justice Isaac Lenaola said that the court had received a contrary report, saying that IEBC had complied with the court order.

“We received a full report from our technical team that was leading the exercise at IEBC and have been informed that the process of compliance was completed last night. As far as our team is concerned, the process at IEBC is finished,” he said.

Lenaola added that the unattended questions surrounding the order issued by the Supreme Court will be handled amid the hearing process on Thursday.

“You can address the question of non-compliance, what servers you think were not accessed, the information that you received, your agents were there,” he said.

On Wednesday, a similar standoff was witnessed at IEBC headquarters when the commission’s officials refused to give access to its servers as per the Supreme Court directive.

Lawyer James Orengo, who is also representing Raila and Karua told the court that they had been allowed to access only one server.

“We have been given restricted access only to the result transmission system, and it has not been granted yet, to only one server. It is established that the IEBC has eight servers,” Orengo said.

In a contradictory report on Wednesday evening, IEBC said it has granted the parties access of the servers. 

“Following the Supreme Court order, IEBC has granted access to the parties to access the servers and the scrutiny exercise is ongoing,” read a statement from the commission.