The independent and boundaries commission (IEBC) is in turmoil and battle lines have been drawn following a memo written by the chairman Wafula Chibukai to the CEO Ezra Chiloba, demanding answers for some 12 key irregularities that affected the just concluded August general elections.

CHEBUKATI MEMO TO CHILOBA

Chebukati is in the memo seeking to have Chiloba explain;

1. Why Chiloba contradicted the position adopted by the commission and communicated by the chairman in a memo he wrote to the staff, following the Supreme Court verdict, which nullified the presidential elections.
2. What happened to the printed forms that were meant to have various security features and names of candidates printed in accordance with the ballot proofs and as verified by the due diligence teams the commission sent to Dubai.
3. Respond and explain whether the printing and scanning machines that were to be used across the country were supplied and if they were fit for the purpose as contracted and whether they were availed and failed to work.
4. What occasioned the massive failure in the devises that would have been used in transmitting results despite IEBC spending Sh 848 million to purchase satellite phones.
5. Why the chairman’s account was used to create a username, account and password without his consent. “Subsequently this account was used to undertake over 9,934 transactions”.
6. What went wrong with KIEMS transmission, where over 10,366 out of 40,883 polling stations sent text results without accompanying forms 34As.
7. Why 595 polling stations failed and/or otherwise refused to send any results for the presidential election.
8. Why the commission adopted and used a porous file server system to transmit forms 34B INSTEAD OF CREATING AND USING A SECURE IP address. “Further respond and explain why the commission used the subject server for the day to day operations prior to the elections; and also why the staff in the ICT directorate used passwords different from the IEBC PASSWORDS.
9. Why some of the KIEMS kit were assigned orange and Airtel as their service providers whereas the two operators  did not have coverage in those assigned areas; “worse still, Safaricom (a contacted provider) had the required coverage for these areas but still was not considered).
10. Why the commission experienced non validation of individual/voters after the KIEMS identification, essentially obfuscating the logs on votes cleared per polling station to vote. “Respond on how many voters were subsequently allowed to vote by manual identification and why”.
11. Why 682 polling stations had an equal number of rejected votes vis-à-vis  the number of registered voters in those polling stations.
12. Lastly, respond and explain why KIEMS GPRS and Geo-fencing features were switched off from the 5^th august, 2017.

FOUR IEBC COMMISSIONERS DENOUNCE CHEBUKATI’S MEMO

Four IEBC commissioners have however distanced themselves from the chairman’s statement.

The commissioners namely; Consolata Nkatha, Yakub Guliye, Paul Kurgat, Boya Molu in a press release said that “the contents of chebukati’s memo were not discussed and sanctioned by the commission plenary”, adding that they learned of the memo through the media.

“Most of the issues raised are not factual and could easily mislead if taken out of context. However the secretariat is reviewing the issue and will prepare appropriate responses to be presented to the commission plenary.

The Supreme Court nullified Uhuru’s victory in the august polls and ordered for a repeat election on grounds that the ballot was marred by irregularities and was not done in accordance with the constitution.

IEBC has announced October 17 as the date for the repeat presidential election.