Jose Camargo: Supreme Court Decision on Hacking IEBC Server

CJ Martha Koome hearing petitions at the Supreme court on August 31, 2022
CJ Martha Koome hearing petitions at the Supreme court on August 31, 2022
Judiciary

The Supreme Court on Monday, September 5, ruled on whether the technology deployed by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission - IEBC met the required standards. 

While delivering the ruling at the Milimani Law Court, Chief Justice Martha Koome noted that IEBC deployed technology in accordance with the law.

"We are not persuaded by the allegation that the technology deployed by the  IEBC failed the standard of Section 86 (A) of the constitution on integrity, verifiability and transparency for the following reasons.

"Whereas it is true that the KIEMS kits failed in 235 polling stations 86,889 voters were granted the right to vote manually and the requisite Form 32A were duly filed. This happened successfully in Kibwezi constituency and part of Kakamega County," read part of the ruling.

Chief Justice Martha Koome addressing the court during the pre-trial conference of at the Milimani.jpg
Supreme Court Judges Dr Smokin Wanjala, CJ Martha Koome, Njoki Ndung'u and Mohamed Ibrahim.
Kenyans.co.ke

IEBC had denied claims by the main petitioner, Raila Odinga that its system had  been infiltrated to allow for original forms 34A to be deleted and replaced with doctored forms which were uploaded to the portal.

"The Smartmatic was procured to provide the necessary technological infrastructure as IEBC did have the capacity to do so. No credible evidence meeting the requisite standards of proof of access to the system by unauthorized persons was adduced by the petitioners. The scrutiny report prepared by the Registrar of this  court did not reveal any security breaches of the IEBC's RTS."

During his submissions before the court, advocate Mahat Somane accused Raila of forging the forms which he presented as evidence.

"In Ndaina polling station, they claimed that their agent provided them with a form which was different from what is in the portal. If you look at the form attached to the portal and even the one the petitioner submitted, there was no agent at the polling station," he stated

On their part, Raila's legal team questioned the role of the Venezuelans in deciding the final outcome of the election. 

However, the commission defended their log-ins, stating that they were employees of Smartmatic and were tasked with maintaining the system- an access that was only granted before the election date.

 On the Form 34A Bearing Camargo  Signature

The judges ruled that: "On regards to the form 34A which was sensationally presented by Julie Soweto to show that Camargo accessed the RTS and interfered with the result contained therein, this also turned out to me no more than hot air and we were taken on a wild goose chase which yielded  nothing of covertive value,"

The judgement read that the court had  inconsequentially thrown out the evidence tabled by John Githongo, stating that it may have contained forgeries and did not meet the evidential threshold.

"Those averments contain no more than hearsay, No admissible evidence was presented to prove the allegations that forms 34 A were fraudulently altered by a group in Karen," she added

In her counterclaim, Julie Soweto, representing Odinga, had told the court that Jose Camargo had access to the system during the election, displaying a form 34A whose metadata bore the foreign national's name.

Soweto argued that the form from Gacharagu Primary School polling station in Muguru ward, Murang'a County, was  evidence enough that he might have infiltrated the system in a bid to alter the results by switching the contents of the court.

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