Wednesday, August 24, 2022

By Steve Otieno

Reporter

Nation Media Group

Anti-graft crusader John Githongo has made hair-raising allegations in an affidavit about the fallibility of the technology used to support Kenya’s electoral processes, calling into question the legitimacy of the form 34A results posted on the polls agency’s website.

The affidavit is one of the documents filed at the Supreme Court to support rigging claims made by the Raila Odinga-led Azimio coalition about the August 9 presidential election.

Mr Githongo alleges that rogue techies were granted access to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) systems and manipulated form 34As coming from polling stations. His sworn testimony claims that this was done to favour President-elect William Ruto.

Mr Githongo claims he got hold of a hacker allegedly hired by Mr Dennis Itumbi, Dr Ruto’s close aide, and the techie allegedly confessed to intercepting uploaded form 34As and doctoring the figures in favour of Dr Ruto before re-uploading them to the IEBC public portal.

The whistle-blower confessed to being part of a team of 56 people, Mr Githongo alleges.

In his court submission, Mr Githongo details his conversation with the unnamed whistle-blower. Here is a word-for-word excerpt.

John: Can you tell us what you are looking at?

Witness: This is a form 34A from Baringo County, Tiaty Constituency. So, in this particular form you can see that votes for candidate Raila Odinga and William Samoei Ruto, then you come here, you can see that the presiding officer comments, we had one rejected ballot paper with serial number P R eleven zero eight two (11082), then this figure has been changed to five (short pause) three five (35) and then also in the stamp you can see that there is two stamps over here. Yes.

John: And uhm, the reason it has two stamps is because one of those stamps is yours?

Witness: Yes.

John: Which means it is a fake stamp?

Witness: Exactly.

John: And this form is currently on the public portal?

Witness: Yes.

John: And these are the ones that have been uploaded?

Witness: Yes.

John: In the public portal?

Witness: Yes.

John: Thank you.

John: Were you part of a team of 56 people?

Witness: Yes.

John: You said they were based in Karen?

Witness: Yes.

John: Uhm, what was the mission of this, uhm, team of, you are all computer specialists?

Witness: Ten of us.

John: Ten of you are computer specialists?

Witness: Yes

John: What was your mission?

Witness: Mission was to get William Samoei Ruto to power.

Witness: And aah, to defeat, aah, the dynasties because we needed to liberate ourselves from the dynasties so that 
freedom is coming.

John: How did you go about that?

John: Here we can see on the screen the IEBC…

Witness: accreditation management system (AMS) uhm…

John: So, you were able to enter the IEBC system or how did it work?

Witness: Yeah, we had the credentials in some instances and in other instances we hacked into the system itself.

John: You hacked into the IEBC system?

Witness: Yes.

John: So, uhm, the results that we were as Kenyans watching on the portal…

Witness: Yes

John: Came from you or from the IEBC, from the KIEMS kits of the IEBC?

Witness: The results came from us. Then we posted to the public portal of IEBC…

John: So, when the KIEMS kits results were transmitted…

Witness: Yes

John: Ostensibly to the IEBC, they were coming to you first?

Witness: Yes.

John: And then what would do to those results?

Witness: We would manipulate and then we send whatever we wanted to send to the public portal so that people would actually download and add the results themselves.

John: So, all the form 34s that are on public portal of the IEBC…

Witness: Yes.

John: Are manufactured by you and your team?

Witness: Yes

John: Where are the real ones because the KIEMS kits sent some real results?

Witness: The real results are on the server.

John: And you were able, did your actions as a team change the outcome of the election?

Witness: Yes, it did.

John: How?

Witness: William Samoei Ruto was declared the winner, with majority of governors.

John: So you also manipulated results of the gubernatorial?

Witness: Yes. In some key counties that were of interest to us.

John: Do you still have access to the IEBC system today?

Witness: Yes.

John: So that group of 56 people is still working in Kenya?

Witness: No. Right now we are out but we can still access the system remotely.

John: So you still have your credentials to access the entire IEBC system?

Witness” Yes, just like the way I have just logged into the accreditation management system.

John: If you wanted to, you can change the results right now?

Witness: Yes, right now I can change, but I fear my other team members. Someone might be seeing that something is happening.

John: So, Kenyans never saw the real results of the election, they saw the results of the elections your team produced?

Witness: Exactly.

Witness: And that is why even tallies were different on our TV media stations, they had different tallies.

Witness: So once you get once we post the results on the public portal, we already knew that whatever would be added would give William Samoei Ruto the win.

John: So the form 34As that everyone has been downloading…

Witness: Yes

John: and using for tallies…

Witness: Yes

John: Are fake really?

Witness: Yes.

John: Because all the results were coming to your system?

Witness: Yes.

John: You were manipulating the form 34As?

Witness: Yes.

John: And then putting them on the public portal?

Witness: Yeah, and then you push the changes on the public portal.

John: So it was a system for rigging an election?

Witness: Yes.

John: Okay.