Nairobi — Lawyers of President-Elect William Ruto and the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) have dismissed claims that Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) servers were infiltrated by unauthorized person to facilitate variation of election results on electronically-transmitted result forms.
Lawyer Muthomi Thiankolu told the court that the evidence through affidavits tabled in the court to substantiate the same was nothing short of fiction and the presidential petition filed was actually a wastage of the court's time.
Thiankolu poked holed on the affidavit by Human Rights Activist John Githongo through a whistleblower that actually had fake logs that alleged infiltration into the IEBC servers.
"He had the audacity to provide before you forged logs and when he is called out instead of profusely apologizing, he sends another affidavit full of 'ifs' and 'buts'," he pointed out.
The counsel painted a narrative of a fiction before the seven-judge bench questioning how the Ruto led team was able to intercept, change and alter form 34As, of which 11,000 were uploaded onto the IEBC portal within minutes.
Odinga's counsel in their petition claimed that Ruto had intercepted, staged, altered, and dumped more than 11,000 Forms 34A within an incredibly short time span of eight minutes.
Thiankolu pointed how it was not humanly possible for Ruto's team to change 23 forms 34A per second when those admitted into the portal were assigned two security features, a date and time stamp.
"The only thing you would alter is those things written by hand either by presiding officer, agent or deputy presiding officer and four agents. We are being told that Ruto had the capacity to intercept these 11,000 forms in 8 minutes and alter them," he challenged.
"It's in the realm of fiction and I suggest that perhaps politicians should stick to politics and leave fiction to artistes," he said.
Further, Ruto through his counsel called upon the court to carry the burden of proof by showing evidence to the court on Form 34As that have been alerted instead of creating fire and fury on a baseless claim.
"The least we would expect is for you to be shown a form 34A that has been altered and not the ones cooked as a work of fiction. We expected them to tell you which polling station the alteration occurred," he stated.
Thiankolu urged the seven-judge bench led by Chief Justice Martha Koome to throw out the case as it can only exist in the realm of fiction terming it a spurious petition.
"When you move this solemn court, you do not put us in an exercise that leaves other civilizations wondering why we have to waste the time of the Supreme Court or God forbid in the small claims court," he said.
Earlier, IEBC responding to claims that forms transmitted as JPEG were edited and uploaded on the commission's public portal as PDF documents after being doctored, lawyer Mahat Somane said the argument by the lead petitioner -- Raila Odinga -- was misleading.
He said the Kenya Integrated Election Management System (KIEMS) kits deployed to over 46,000 polling stations had an onboard imaging software that automatically transformed images of forms taken into PDF before transmission to the central server.
"The kit takes an image, imbedded in it (the kit) is a scanner so the image is scanned as a PDF. We don't have any other output," Somane told the 7-judge panel of the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Martha Koome, the court's president.
He praised the security of KIEMS infrastructure describing it as military-grade saying it was designed to operate on a blockchain system making it impenetrable.
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"The kit actually tells the Presiding Officer to retake the image if it is not clear, he then presses send and even without network the image cannot be recalled. The (queued) form then hits the portal whenever the kit gains connectivity," Somane said.
"Our system is so good because it is based on blockchain and it gives resources as required based on the number of people accessing the portal," he added.
Somane told the court the server was also equipped with a verification mechanism that ensured the serial numbers of forms from specific polling stations are valid before they are admitted into the portal.
"Those forms answer some jurisdiction questions before they are admitted into the portal. The portal verifies the polling station code as well as the serial number of the kit deployed to the specific polling station," Somane clarified.
