[275] What was IEBC’s answer to the above contention? In his
submissions before us, Mr. Nyamodi, learned counsel for IEBC outlined to
the Court the mode of the transmission process of the results and
submitted that after the manual filling in of the Form 34A, the POs then
keyed in the results into the KIEMS kit, took the image of the Form 34A
and then simultaneously transmitted the same to the Constituency and
National Tallying Centres. Our understanding of this process is that the
figures keyed into the KIEMS corresponded with those on the scanned
images of Forms 34A. In the circumstances, we do not understand why
those figures, which learned counsel referred to as mere “statistics” that did
not go into the determination of the outcome of the results, differed.
[276] In these circumstances, bearing in mind that IEBC had the custody
of the record of elections, the burden of proof shifted to it to prove that it
had complied with the law in the conduct of the presidential election
especially on the transmission of the presidential election results and it
failed to discharge that burden.
[277] Of further note is that IEBC strenuously opposed the petitioners’
application for access to its servers, claiming that such access would
compromise the security of the data in those servers. After considering the
application, we overruled that objection and partly allowed the application.
Though we did not therefore accept IEBC’s said claim of compromising the
security of its servers, considering the fact that having spent billions of
taxpayers’
money IEBC should have set a robust backup system,
nevertheless to assuage those fears, we granted the petitioners a “read only
access”
which included copying where the petitioners so wished. The report
Presidential
Petition
No.
1
of
2017
115
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