Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore has blasted politicians over frequent attacks and links to rigging in the August 8 general election. Collymore told journalists on Tuesday that he will personally hold politicians threatening his staff responsible if anything happens to them.
He said dragging commercial co-operations into political wars, especially while political temperatures are high, is ill-advised. NASA presidential candidate Raila Odinga claimed the mobile services provider colluded with IEBC to bungle the August 8 election in favour of Jubilee’s president Uhuru Kenyatta.
Raila claimed one of Safaricom’s VPNs terminated transmission of results, cutting links between KIEMs kits and IEBC servers. He also said the electoral agency’s cloud server, to which transmission was terminated, is registered in Spain but operated from France by OT-Morpho – the KIEMS kits supplier.
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But Collymore said such claims are “baseless, unwarranted and life-threatening” to Safaricom workers. “These utterances are callous and reckless, considering they are just baseless allegations putting people’s lives at risk. I will hold those accusers personally responsible if any harm meets my staff,” he said.
“Those who want to accuse must engage me because I am the leader of the team. Don’t accuse my innocent members of staff.”
“I reiterate these comments are unfair and unjust…let them fight their political agenda instead of dragging us into their woes.”
He noted he does not intend to take any legal action against the accusers but vowed to put them to task if any of his staff members encounters danger. Collymore noted all three mobile services providers will continue to engage in the country’s electoral process because their is no way results can be transmitted without them.
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“IEBC needs us to transmit the results because they cannot be transmitted by magic,” he said. “Some of us have lost billions of money and IEBC is yet to pay. We come here to offer services in good faith and goodwill because yes, IEBC needs us. Dragging us into political drama is so immature and I am so angry about this.”
Collymore had previously dismissed the claims linking his company to the rigging saying the firm transmitted all election results from the KIEMS kits to IEBC servers as per the laid down procedures.
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