Nairobi — Azimio presidential candidate Raila Odinga’s Chief Agent caused drama at the National Tallying Centre of Thursday as he discredited the electoral agency’s technology terming it as slow.
Saitabao Ole Kanchory engaged Abdi Guliye in a heated exchange over the pace of a mock transmission exercise.
“From what is happening here today we can already see there are challenges. If this is the pace the results are being transmitted here, how much slower will this technology be in the actual elections. You must assure us and the Kenyans that this election will be fair, free and credible and that the technology that you are planning to use will be reliable,” he said.“We all know that elections in this country are a matter of life and death and we must treat this election as such.”
The Independent and Electoral Commission (IEBC) had just commenced the transmission of mock presidential election results when Kanchory rose to challenge the process.
Guliye dismissed Kanchory’s assertions asking him not to politicize the exercise.
IEBC rolled out the mock exercise on Thursday afternoon with 2,900 polling centers set to transmit scanned copies of Forms 34A, the statutory results slip for presidential election results.
Commission’s Director of ICT, Michael Ouma, pointed out that every Form 34A will be encrypted to the Kenya Integrated Elections Management System (KIEMS) tablet at the polling station.
“Each form will be encrypted to the tablet. This will enable us to prove which form is from which tablet. Each tablet has two sim cards. Safaricom will be primary while the secondary sim card Airtel and Telkom will be selected based on the strength of its signals,” said Ouma.
Section 44 (4) of the Elections Act states that the commission shall, in an open and transparent manner that is procure put in place the technology necessary for the conduct of a General Election at least 120 days before such elections and test, verify and deploy such technology at least 60 days before the elections.
“The law requires that the simulation and testing of the technology should be done 60 days before election. We are testing the technology to be used in the results transmission in August,” IEBC CEO Marjan Hussein Marjan affirmed.
Electoral body’s Chairperson Wafula Chebukati called on agents to take results of Form 34As for verification at the Constituency and National Tallying Centres.
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Chebukati said the Supreme Court nullified the August 8, 2017 elections based on the results transmission, adding that the Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) and the Electronic Voter Identification (EVID) did not have an issue.
“We encourage agents to take the result from Form 34 As at the polling stations. They can use these results to challenge them at the verification process at the Constituency and National Tallying Centre,” said Chebukati.
Section 39 of the Elections Act states that the commission shall determine, declare and publish the results of an election immediately after the close of polling.
To avoid any incidents of electoral theft Marjan said that the ballot papers to be used in the August polls will have 9-10 security features while the Forms to be used for collating results having a similar number of security features.
“We are leaving nothing to chance. All the 34A will be physically received at the National Tallying Centre together with the Form 34B. The commission will verify all the forms and be signed by the agents and the Returning officers,” said Marjan.
He also disclosed that the commission will not be transmitting results in form of text messages, but images captured after the Presiding Officer and the agents have agreed that the results as captured in Form 34A are correct.
