In an email to The Standard, Mr Hassan noted that the procurement law prohibits him from sitting in these committees.
“It is the law that I don’t chair evaluation committee or the tender committee that made the award. The management reports to the chairman and commissioners on all procurement matters,” Hassan said in an email to The Standard clarifying his role in the process.
Tendering procedure
The Standard on Sunday reported how the electoral commission, which conducted the March 4 General Election, bought voter identification gadgets, some of which collapsed under unclear circumstances on Election Day, and which are the centre of an election dispute.
A review of the tendering procedure by the Public Procurement Administrative Review Board found out the tender to supply poll books was awarded to the South African firm on September 29, last year, three weeks before the technical evaluation among the shortlisted bidders.
“It’s indicated that I, Mr Hassan personally awarded the tender that had many questions. The implication is clear that I gave an award to a company under questionable circumstances. Nothing could be farther from the truth,” clarified Hassan.
The public procurement regulator came short of cancelling IEBC’s tender but allowed it to proceed for the greater public good because of the little time that was remaining to the election day.
Failed to function
The Election Observation Group said in about 8 per cent of the streams observed electronic poll books were either missing or malfunctioning as at 11.30am on the Election Day and by 8.30pm, 55.1 per cent of the polling streams observed the electronic poll books failed to function properly.
This comes at a time when the IEBC has been dragged to the Supreme Court by the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) after disputing the outcome of the recent election
CORD wants the electronic system used by the polls body audited.
However, in its defence, IEBC has maintained that the kits were not faulty and that it never abandoned the system for a manual one on grounds that the law in fact demands that the IEBC uses the manual system to declare the final results of the election.
-Standard Digital
