Chebukati demands Chiloba explains failure, illegalities in explosive memo

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Chairperson Wafula Chebukati penned an explosive 12-point memo to electoral commission CEO Ezra Chiloba demanding explanation of failures and damning illegalities in the August 8 poll.

In the leaked memo, Chairman Chebukati asked Chiloba to explain what happened to the printed forms that were meant to have various approved security features and names of candidates printed in accordance with the ballot proofs and as verified by the due diligence teams that the Commission sent to Dubai.

The poll body boss sought an explanation to the massive failure of the satellite phones purchased by the commission for areas without network coverage.

Owing to the Commission’s spending of Ksh848 million to purchase satellite phones to be distributed in each constituency and county tallying centres, Chebukati now wants Chiloba to explain why there were massive failure in the devises which were supposed to be used in transmitting results.

Chebukati also wants Mr. Chiloba to take action against staff members who under the instruction of ICT Director James Muhati created a username account and a password in the name of the Chairperson, and without his knowledge or consent used the account in over 9,934 transactions.

Further, Mr. Chebukati wants an explanation on why the commission adopted what he terms ‘a porous file server system’ which allowed individuals to manage other peoples accounts to transmit Forms 34B, instead of a more secure IP address.

Additionally, Chebukati also wants Chiloba to explain why 595 polling stations failed or refused to send any results for the presidential elections, 682 polling stations had an equal number of rejected votes despite vis-à-vis the number of registered voters in those polling stations, some KIEMS kits were assigned Orange and Airtel as their service providers even when the two did not have coverage in the assigned areas yet Safaricom had the required network coverage and why the KIEMS kits in over 10,366 polling stations failed to work completely.