A ruling by the High Court on Wednesday, April 8, handed a win to controversial French multinational Idemia.

The French firm had been contracted by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to run its key election management system on a five-year contract.

A report published by the Daily Nation on Wednesday 8, provided that Justice John Mativo had sided with the French Firm against the National Assembly on the basis of irregularities in bringing the case forward.The National Assembly Public Accounts Committee (PAC) had recommended that the firm formerly known as OT-Morpho be barred from doing business in the country for a period of 10 years.

Justice Mativo, however, declared that that PAC had been in contravention of the law by applying it retrospectively against the French firm that managed the country's elections system in the disputed 2017 presidential elections.


"By recommending the cancellation of contracts, the National Assembly and PAC fell into error and exercised jurisdiction it did not possess. To that extent, the National Assembly and PAC abrogated to themselves judicial functions which the law has not vested into it, hence, exercising in excess of their jurisdiction," ruled Justice Mativo.

The court similarly disregarded recommendations from the National Assembly to have the company deregistered on grounds that it was not registered in Kenya when it was awarded the election management contract.

Idema first won the Ksh4 billion IEBC tender to supply 45,000 Kenya Integrated Election Management System (Kiems) kits that were used in the 2017 General Elections.
The Firm was called on once more to supply the kits used in the repeat election on October 26, 2017, on a Ksh2.5 billion contract.

The Kits were to solve Keny's election management issues but were cited as having failed spectacularly in transmitting which contributed to the nullification of election results in August 2017.

According to the 2017 contract between the French firm and the IEBC, the multinational was meant to supply, install, configure, test and commission the kits as well as provide support on the use of the technology.
https://www.kenyans.co.ke/news/51828-court-sides-french-firm-handled-disputed-2017-election