The full Supreme Court ruling delivered today has adversely mentioned a number of top IEBC officials as being responsible for the irregularities and illegalities that led to the nullification of the August 8th Presidential election.While delivering the ruling, Deputy Chief Justice Philomena Mwilu stated: The IEBC system was compromised and contaminated or IEBC officials themselves compromised and bungled the election.
Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Chairperson <Wafula Chebukati, Ezra Chiloba, ICT Director James Muhati and Director of Voter registration and election operations Immaculate Kassait have all been mentioned as having played a part in bungling the election.Wafula Chebukati, as the Returning Officer for the Presidential Election, was found culpable of failing to ensure the results were transmitted in the prescribed form as per the Constitution.
The Court had earlier noted that the winner of the Presidential election was declared by the commission with 11,883 Forms 34A still unaccounted for.
Chief Executive Ezra Chiloba was mentioned in connection with the mishandling of the Kenya Integrated Election Management System. This is after it emerged that the electoral body had failed to supply the National Super Alliance (NASA) with the necessary result forms up to 10 days after the election.
A complementary system was also not in place despite assurances from the commission two days to the election that they were well prepared for any eventualities that may arise with the Results Transmission System.
ICT Director James Muhati was found not to have complied with a court order that compelled the electoral body to grant read-only access to its servers for scrutiny by the petitioner and court-appointed IT experts.
The court found that the IEBC acted in contempt of court by denying them access to its servers.
"Our order of scrutiny was a golden opportunity for IEBC to discredit the petitioner's claims but they disobeyed the court order," Justice Mwilu stated.
Immaculate Kassait, on the other hand, was found to have misled the court after she stated in a sworn affidavit that all statutory forms had security features. Evidence produced in the course of the trial proved otherwise.
Inevitably, there will be calls for the officers to vacate their positions ahead of the fresh polls.
