The Supreme Court has declared that compliance to an order issued on scrutiny of the IEBC server has been completed.
This is notwithstanding conflicting reports on the status of the progress.
Moreover, Raila Odinga’s lawyers claimed that IEBC had refused to comply with the orders, only giving limited access to the servers.
According to Senior Counsel Philip Murgor, the IEBC had only allowed limited access to server five out of the eight servers. Adding that some logs were deleted.
“With the limited access provided yesterday to server number 5 our team were able to observe a large number of deletions. We suspect and are concerned that the delay on part of IEBC is to delete vital data,” he told the court.
“Finally when times ran out not to provide the information we require or provide logs that are not useful to anybody,” Murgor added.
Likewise, the electoral commission accused Raila’s lawyers of misleading the court on the status of the compliance to the court order and propagating a narrative in the public domain.
“Am quite perturbed by remarks from my learned Senior counsel when he says IEBC is not complying with court order that certainly is not an inaccurate reporting. I think the most important thing is to get an important reporting on this matter,” Gumbo stated.
Nevertheless, while responding to the concerns, the 7-judge bench through Justice Isaac Lenaola said that the compliance was completed and the Supreme Court was only waiting for the report.
“We received a full report from our technical team that was leading the exercise at IEBC. We have been informed that the process of compliance was completed last night,” he pointed out.
In addition, the apex court declined giving anymore compliance orders on the scrutiny of the servers. The court directed them raise concerns once they receive the full report later on in the day.
“The court has asked me to respond that should there be issues left unattended too, let those issues be addressed when we receive the report this morning,” Justice Lenaola stated.
“You can address the question of what you are calling non-compliance, the questions on what servers were not accessed and IEBC can respond to say what are you answers to the complains by the petitioners,” he stated.
Furthermore, the supreme court commenced hearings on the petition on Wednesday, August 31 after conducting a status conference on Tuesday.
Moreover, Justices of the court had ordered a recount of ballots form fifteen polling stations listed by one of the petitioners as well as election servers to ascertain claims on system manipulation.
Likewise, lawyers representing the lead petitioners – Azimio presidential candidate Raila Odinga and his running mate Martha Karua – made their oral submissions challenging William Ruto’s declaration as President-Elect saying he failed to attain the 50 per cent plus 1 threshold set out in the constitution.
Moreover, Raila’s legal team led by Senior Counsel Orengo also questioned the discrepancies between votes cast in the presidential election compared to other electoral contests including gubernatorial races held concurrently.
Nevertheless, on Thursday, September 1, the commission and its Chairperson Wafula Chebukati will have three hours and a total of five lawyers.
Also Read: IEBC Has Denied Us Full Access To Its Servers, Petitioners Tell Court
Four of the lawyers will represent the commission to argue their case in opposition to the petition.
Additionally, IEBC’s submission will be followed by Ruto’s whose team of four lawyers led by Senior Counsel Fred Ngatia who were allocated three hours.
