Questions Supreme Court judges want Ruto, IEBC to answer

The legal teams of the respondents will on Friday have 15 minutes to respond to issues raised by the Supreme Court judges on Thursday.

The seven-judge bench led by Chief Justice Martha Koome asked questions in turns which included the role of the seven IEBC Commissioners and technology in verifying of the election results.

Below are some of the questions asked by the apex court judges:

1. Chief Justice Martha Koome

• Why did the live streaming of results stop?
• Demonstrate how forms 34A attached by the respondents in their affidavit were photo shopped?
• Why did the IEBC Chairperson see it fit to allocate ‘domestic’ chores living the core business of IEBC to the CEO to supervise?

2. Deputy Chief Justice Philomena Mwilu

• Where agents are not present during an election. Is it not the role of IEBC to ensure that the law is upheld or the process in the event where there is no agency?
• Did the postponement of eight electoral areas affect only presidential vote? Have the subsequent election returned a different result to the turn-out? If they have, in what respect?
• What is the IEBC supposed to do when there are no agents for the candidates since Article 81 places burden of ensuring that we have a fair and free election on IEBC?
• What is the constitutional role of the six commissioners under article 140 and juxtaposition their role against that of the staff of the secretariat and the chair? Article 138(3c)
• Comment about the walking away of the four commissioners to go to Serena, almost at the same time when the chairperson was about to announce their results. How was it timed?  Does their walking out mean anything under Article 140? If it does, what is it? If it doesn’t, why not?

3. Justice Mohamed Ibrahim

• Would you expect us to make a determination on the chaos that erupted at Bomas, apportion blame yet the matter is not before us and yet neither of us were witnesses or at Bomas?

4. Justice Smokin Wanjala

• What was the supplier of technology, Smartmatic International, maintaining in the elections system?
• What was the maintenance of the server by the Venezuelan?
• How relevant is this voter turnout to the determination of whether a candidate got 50 percent plus one vote?
• When calm was restored at Bomas why did the chair not include the results from the 27 constituencies in the final tally yet we are told they had been verified and tallied?
• If purpose of call to Chebukati by Joseph Kinyua was to influence the decoration of results, are we to assume they (NSAC) already knew the results?

5. Justice Njoki Ndung’u

• What is the role of the other commissioners? It seems to me that the chair works with the CEO who is not vetted by parliament.
• What happens if the IEBC chairman announces the wrong results, or becomes incapacitated or dead who will announce the result?
• When results for other elective positions area announced locally at constituency or county tallying centres, how is that information is transmitted to the public? Are the commissioners involved or is it the CEO only or chairperson only?  Who is involved in the public declaration of those results? 
• What happens when the chairperson decides to work with the CEO who is not vetted?
• When results come for the other seats and announced or declared at constituency, how is that information transmitted to the public?

6. Justice Isaac Lenaola

• The format of the elections results form was initially jpeg, at which point does it convert to PDF, forget the CSV.
• There was an extra day by which Chebukati could have declared the results. Why did he not wait until that day, violence or no violence, reach out to the four commissioners, try to reach a consensus, and address the issue of the 27 constituencies so that these suspicions that have cropped up could not be an issue?
• Is there any reason why he did not take advantage of the extra day to do what he had to do?
• What do you want the court to do about the submission that Chebukati lied about the visitation by the National Security Advisory Council?

7. Justice William Ouko

• What was the number of voters from the 235 polling stations where KIEMS kits were not used?
• Was Wafula Chebukati appointed as an agent for the presidential election by the commission or was as national returning officer in his capacity as the chairman of the commission?
• Assuming manual register was used, are you able to say what was the actual number in the polling stations?
• Kenyans were following the streaming of results live and then something happened and that stopped. Explain to us what might have happened for that to stop.

The legal team for the respondents who include President-elect William Ruto and the IEBC have been given 15 minutes each on Friday to respond to the issues raised by the judges.