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.
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?
John: Uhm, what was the mission of this, uhm, team of, you are all computer specialists?
Witness: And aah, to defeat, aah, the dynasties because we needed to liberate ourselves from the dynasties so that
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: So, uhm, the results that we were as Kenyans watching on the portal…
John: Came from you or from the IEBC, from the KIEMS kits of the IEBC?
John: So, when the KIEMS kits results were transmitted…
John: Ostensibly to the IEBC, they were coming to you first?
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…
John: And you were able, did your actions as a team change the outcome of the election?
Witness: William Samoei Ruto was declared the winner, with majority of governors.
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: 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.
Witness: Yeah, and then you push the changes on the public portal.
