Kenya poll petition: opposition granted 'limited' access to IEBC servers

Kenya’s Supreme Court has granted the opposition coalition, NASA, limited access to the electoral body’s data.

The ruling is seen as an early victory for NASA as a poll petition they filed challenging the validity of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s re-election starts. NASA went to court claiming fraudulent result transmission in the August 8 polls, labeling the result as ‘computer-generated.’

“The petitioners and the third respondents shall be granted a read only access of information related to number of servers, files without the disclosure of software version,” Justice Isaac Lenaola said on Monday.

The scope of the ruling includes among others, that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) providing access login trails of users into its servers, access to password policy and matrix.

The IEBC have also been ordered to furnish the petitioners with certified copies of key result collation records – referred to as Forms 34A and 34B. Its lawyer said they will comply by the ruling especially so because they had nothing to hide.

The elections agency declared President Uhuru Kenyatta winner of the hotly contested polls with 54.2 per cent whiles Raila Odinga was said to have garnered 44.7 per cent.