![]() ![]() Msando’s unsolved case remains a symbol of a fraught electoral process-one that was supposed to be legitimated through technology but may have ultimately been harmed by it. What we do know is that the technology Msando managed-systems the country hoped would help resolve entrenched anger over repeated disputes at the ballot box-failed in ways that offer lessons about what technology can and cannot do to protect the integrity of an election. Msando’s killers have not been found, and the story of Kenya’s election failure has yet to be fully told. “We are trying our best to find your father’s killers and I promise that we shall.”įour months later, that promise remains unfulfilled. “We don’t know yet,” he said after the pause. Msando’s six-year-old son surprised the aging politician with a question: Why had his father been murdered, and who did it? Odinga stared at the boy before responding. Nearly three weeks after the IEBC had declared Kenyatta’s August victory, Odinga paid a visit to the late Msando’s home. Three weeks later, the Supreme Court issued a stunning verdict overturning the result, only to have the country return Kenyatta to the presidency once more in a repeat vote held in October. This year, in the vote on August 8 that followed Msando’s brutal killing, Odinga lost again to Kenyatta and his Jubilee Party. Odinga, who heads the National Super Alliance, or NASA, ran again in 2013, and lost, narrowly, to Kenyatta. Odinga had run for president three times before, including 2007, when he lost to Mwai Kibaki under heavily disputed circumstances, touching off a horrific wave of violence that still clouds the country’s politics. ![]() Msando’s death came as the country braced for a political re-match between the incumbent president, Uhuru Kenyatta, son of Kenya’s first president, and Raila Odinga, a former prime minister and longtime opposition leader of the country. An autopsy revealed Msando was tortured and then killed by strangulation. The IT manager’s body, along with that of a 21-year-old female companion, was found later that morning in a wooded area roughly ten miles from the city center. Footage from city CCTV cameras shows the vehicle circling erratically through the Kenyan capital, until it disappears on a highway traveling north an hour later. After leaving the broadcast studio, he spent the rest of the evening at a downtown club with friends, before getting in his car with three unknown individuals shortly before 2:00 a.m. Msando, though, would never get a chance to make sure the system functioned as intended. ![]() ![]() Earlier that evening, he’d appeared on national television to explain the workings of the commission’s high-tech answer to the suspicions that had long dogged election results in the country. In his three months on the job, Msando had gained a reputation for competence, and integrity, in a position of critical importance. His predecessor at the IEBC, the body overseeing Kenya’s elections, had been placed on leave after he allegedly refused to cooperate in an audit of its technical systems. Msando, a plump, bespectacled father of four, had only been in his role since May. In the early hours of July 29, 10 days before Kenya’s presidential election, Chris Msando, a 44-year-old information technology manager at the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, got behind the wheel of his Land Rover in Nairobi’s central business district. This article is edited from a story shared exclusively with members of The Masthead, the membership program from The Atlantic. ![]()
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