LAWYERS MAKE THEIR FINAL SUBMISSIONS AMID DRAMATIC “SERVERS STANDOFF”

President Uhuru’s lawyers responded to the issues laid out by the petitioner on Tuesday, and termed the petition as a “bogus, science fiction”. Lawyer Ahmed Nassir Abdulahi maintained that the August elections were done according to the Constitution and it was all about the voter.

“The election was all but the persons who exercised their sovereign will,” Abdulahi said.

The 1^st respondent in the case, IEBC, also maintained that the elections were fair.

Nasa is seeking to have President Uhuru’s victory revoked on grounds that the polls violated the Constitution and were not “free, fair and verifiable”.

In their submissions, the petitioner’s lawyers argued that the results declared by the IEBC were not based on form 34 A and demonstrated to the court how some forms 34B were missing some security features like bar codes.

THE SERVERS MELEE

Advocate James Orengo had sought to interrupt Uhuru’s lawyers when they were presenting their case, to inform the court that they had not been granted access to the IEBC servers.

Tech savvy Kenyans following the proceedings were treated to a rare spectacle when Orengo told the court that the reason given by the IEBC for the denied access as ordered by the court is that the servers are hosted outside the country and due to time difference between Kenya and German, the team hosting the servers were still sleeping.

The debacle even got more interesting when Paul Muite, lead counsel for the IEBC, moved to justify the standoff.

“IEBC servers are in Europe but the company NTT is in America and you know the time difference,” Muite told the court.

Kenyans took to social media to react to the clueless, incredulous utterances by Muite.

Stanley Prince Nyachae: Muite is telling the Supreme Court that the IEBC servers are in Germany hence the logistical challenge in providing NASA with Read Only Access.
He probably has no idea what a server is and that all one needs is an IP address, Username and password.

Dennis Onsarigo‏: IEBC just moved from Europe to America in explaining why there was a challenge in accessing its servers…

Nanjala Nyabola‏:  So the IEBC contracted a US company with servers in France to run a Kenyan election?

CofekBreakingNews‏:Paul Muite and IEBC ought to know that it does NOT matter the geographical location of servers. Only passwords!!! #PresidentialPetitionKe

Harrison Mumia‏: Am an IT guy. You cannot delete logs unless you uninstall the entire database. And that would creates even more problems. IEBC R cornered.

The hearing of the petition closed yesterday with Chief Justice David Maraga saying that the bench will make their ruling on Friday, 1 September.