The National Super Alliance (NASA) Lead Counsel James Orengo and Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission counsel Paul Muite clashed at the Supreme Court Tuesday.
This is after Orengo told the Chief Justice David that an order issued by the court regarding to access of tools and data by the IEBC had hit a snag due to “substantial non-compliance.”
“There’s substantial non-compliance by IEBC on order on server access,” lamented Orengo.
Justice Maraga took Muite who is representing the IEBC to task questioning him why his client was obstructing a court order.
And in response, Muite said that his client was in no way obstructing the court order.
He explained that they have complied with every other detail as directed by the court except the servers which are in Europe.
“The servers are in Europe; we are not refusing to give NASA access,” responded Muite.
But Orengo protested this saying that IEBC should have made arrangements on Monday when the order was issued on how to get the servers from Europe.
The NASA lead Counsel argued that the server handlers in Europe were asleep as they are behind Kenyan time which poses a risk for them of failing to table a report as directed by the court.
Justice Maraga directed that the parties resolve the impasse and present their report at 5pm as earlier directed.
“Even if your clients are in Europe, wake them up and comply with the orders,” directed the CJ.
He added that in the event the servers will not have arrived, they will determine the situation and take necessary action depending on reasons given by the IEBC.
On Monday, the court granted a “read-only” order on IEBC servers and logs, data and tools.
IEBC was required to provide servers at its disposal, firewalls without the passwords, the passwords, systems user types and IEBC ICT redundancy plan.
Also, Certified copies of the penetration tests conducted by the commission prior to, and during the August 8 elections; specific GPRS location of Kenya integrated election management systems (KIEMS), certified copies of all KIEMS kits, polling stations KIEMS kits allocation, technical agreements signed between the commission and service providers logging in trail of KIEMS users.
Logging in trail of IEBC servers, original copies of forms 34A, 34B and 34C prepared at the polling station and transmitted to the national tallying centre and reading devices to distinguish the authenticity of the all documents will be provided.
The access was to be supervised by Supreme Court Registrar Esther Nyaiyaki.
By Pharis Kinyua. He’s an online journalist and an author for Jamhuri News