French digital security firm OT-Morpho has revealed that the company does not have a contract with the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) for the fresh presidential election set for October.
OT-Morpho is the firm that supplied the Kenya Integrated Elections Management System (KIEMS) kits for the August polls.
In an interview with the BBC's Focus On Africa, Morpho's Chief Operating Officer Fredric Beylier stated: “We don’t have a contract with them (IEBC) for the next election yet,” going on to add “If we had the contract by now – and assuming that the Supreme Court does not recommend any technical change in its ruling — we’d need up to the end of October to reconfigure our systems for the repeat elections.”
IEBC Chairperson Wafula Chebukati had earlier announced October 17th as the date for the repeat Presidential election. An election on that date is, however, looking unlikely following the OT Morpho's admission.
Other reports had indicated that the election would be moved to October 26th.
The full Supreme Court ruling delivered on Wednesday found no IEBC official criminally culpable for the failures of the electoral body to deliver an election meeting the threshold set in the Constitution.
The Judges, however, promised that the issues that led to the nullification must be rectified ahead of the next polls or else they will render the same ruling after the fresh polls.
Justice Philomena Mwilu had singled out issues with the Results Transmission System as one of the major reasons for cancelling the August 8th election.
She stated that President Uhuru was declared the winner with 11,883 Forms 34A unavailable therefore the declared results were invalid.
This was in spite of assurances given by the Chebukati-led commission that they were well prepared for any eventualities that may arise with the transmission of results.
The court insisted that the electoral body must have a complementary system for the fresh election to ensure such issues do not recur.
