The head of Kenya’s leading telecoms company, Safaricom, warned almost two weeks before the country’s presidential election that the organisers had failed to prepare an electronic system to protect the vote’s integrity.
Bob Collymore, Safaricom chief executive, wrote to Issack Hassan, chairman of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission before the poll on March 4. His letter, dated February 21, drew attention to shortcomings that in his view “could seriously compromise the IEBC’s ability to execute a credible election”.
Mr Collymore underlined the potential reputational consequences of a “failed poll” for Safaricom the network provider for the electronic transmission system. Safaricom is Kenya’s biggest taxpayer and one of the largest listed companies in east Africa. The company is credited with pioneering a mobile money transfer and savings system that has been replicated across Africa and beyond.
Several senior officials at the commission failed to respond to requests for comment. However, Mr Hassan, reiterated on Thursday that the electronic system was only ever a provisional safeguard and the paper tally was always intended to provide the final official result.
Mr Collymore’s letter said the company had not received information on the location of all polling stations and urged Mr Hassan to compel commission officials to pursue more technical testing of stress loads, mobile handsets and website security.
The commission abandoned its electronic transmission system on Wednesday after servers overloaded and returning agents across the country grew impatient with multiple attempts to transmit polling data. The IEBC then began the painfully slow process of announcing results after paper tallies were bussed in.
The Financial Times has learnt that only 15,000 of 33,000 handsets provided for the transmission of results ever sent any data. Only 23,000 were enabled with relevant settings. The commission was responsible for enabling the handsets.
In an echo of a dispute over the 2007 election, the coalition behind one of the main contenders for the presidency – Raila Odinga, prime minister – said on Thursday that some results from paper tallies were being doctored. Mr Odinga’s movement urged the commission to halt the count and restart to allow party agents to verify constituency tallies with those collated at IEBC’s headquarters in Nairobi.
The electronic system, and a biometric identification system which also failed in many areas, were designed to immunise the system against fraud. They were supposed to avert disputes over results such as those that marred Kenya’s 2007 polls, triggering mass protests and interethnic killing that claimed more than 1,100 lives and brought east Africa’s biggest economy to a standstill.
Mr Collymore expressed concern in his letter “at the general casual nature of some of the partners and some of the institution’s [IEBC] senior officials” when engaged on the system’s shortcomings.
Foreign donors spent tens of millions of dollars supporting the commission and have been reluctant to criticise flaws in the counting process. EU officials said member countries, led by Britain, contributed about $70m towards the costs of this week’s poll.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2013
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