It was a sad day for democracy yesterday, after one side of the political divide attempted to subdue the will of the people, based on what has now been confirmed to be fabricated data.
On Wednesday, Raila made the first allegations that the entire vote transmission process was a fraud and Kenyans should reject all results from MCA upwards. He said that the transmission system had been ‘hacked’ to give Jubilee a constant lead. He went on to reveal that the late Msando’s login credentials were used to add algorithms into the system that would add a certain percent to Uhuru and reduce from him.
Raila even provided a 52 page document (log file) which he said showed evidence of this hack. Basically, a log file is a document that records activities in a computer system. Most software, from small ones to large ones like Windows or Android operating systems produce various log files.
What Raila had provided was later revealed to be an ‘error log file’. This basically means it recorded the errors in that particular system and not any other activities. Some of these errors included the failed login by users named ‘Msando’ and ‘Chebukati’.
Inadvertently, what this log file proved was the opposite of what Raila intended. That the system was in fact not penetrated since login failed.
And then IEBC gave their bombshell yesterday.
The electoral body had earlier said they had not received a formal complaint from Nasa. Yesterday afternoon, Nasa finally delivered it to Bomas, also including the new numbers which they claimed were leaked by a whistle blower, showing Raila ahead of Uhuru.
IEBC responded a few hours later and shared their response with the media.
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In the letter signed by Chairman Wafula Chebukati, IEBC deconstructed Nasa’s claims one by one, and impressively if I may add.
The most obvious one was rubbishing the hacking allegation by revealing that IEBC does not use the type of database the error logs are pulled from. The logs clearly reveal that database was of MS SQL type, while IEBC is using Oracle.
If we were to put that in comparative layman terms, Raila provided files from a Samsung Galaxy, while the IEBC is using an iPhone.
More experts have termed the Nasa log files ‘falsified’, particularly pointing out revelations on the same logs that the database was running on a maximum 4gb machine. For comparison, I am typing this article on an 8gb computer. It would be very unlikely that an entire IEBC system with millions of records and carrying the hopes and aspirations of an entire country is less powerful than a mid-priced laptop.
The simplest logical explanation is that someone working from his laptop/computer, probably very far from Bomas, created a database and named it ‘IEBC’, and then created the users ‘Chebukati’ and ‘Msando’; and the numerous tables for all counties. Then printed the log file that was the backbone of Raila’s hacking claims.
In the same IEBC response to Nasa, they point out that the numbers Nasa had provided showed laughable arithmetic errors, like the votes cast in Siaya exceeding the registered voters, or the number of votes cast in Nyamira county being the exact same number of votes cast in Nairobi county. That’s a pretty big coincidence.
IEBC also states that Nasa has failed to provide the Form 34As and Form 34Bs to back up the figures they allege. So far, the Form 34As and Form 34Bs presented to party agents and uploaded to the public portal correspond to what has been streaming all along. Presidential candidate Ekuru Aukot alluded to the same in his concession speech, saying their analysis showed no differences. He congratulated Uhuru Kenyatta and urged Raila to concede.
From the IEBC response, we can conclude that Nasa’s allegations are a big fat lie. Either innocently fed to Raila and party leadership, or deliberately fabricated and released to try and subdue the will of the people.
Read the entire IEBC response below. The letter is dated 9th August but it was obviously released yesterday. So that is just a simple typing error.
