Israeli company refutes rigging claims

A SMALL Israeli company has refuted claims by the opposition party in Zimbabwe that it was hired by President Robert Mugabe to provide software to rig the elections.

Cogniview, a data conversion software company based in Israel, was accused by Tendai Biti, Secretary General of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) of providing software, able to alter PDF files to change voter registration lists and rig the vote its favour.

“Mugabe and his cronies intend to steal this election through the use of sophisticated software provided by the Israeli company with Mossad (Israeli intelligence agency) connections.

“ZEC (the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission) is not running this election but it is being run by Mudede (Registrar-General Tobaiwa) and the CIO (Central Intelligence Organisation spy agency) with the help of the Israelis,” said Biti.

Cogniview CEO, Yoav Ezer, has refuted the claims by the MDC and said that he was “completely surprised” by the allegations, adding, “They are science fiction to us”.

Ezer explained what he thought had led to the confusion about his company being spread through the Zimbabwean press. He claims that open source PDF converting software developed by his company a year ago, CC PDF converter (available for free online), which allows anything printable to be converted into PDF, was used by officials to compile voter data.

The program adds a Creative Commons license to the last page of its documents, including a link to Cogniview’s website. The voter-roles provided to the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) by Zimbabwean officials were in PDF format and had this very link attached, on the final page. This led the MDC to jump to the angry conclusion that it was all an Israeli concocted Mossad plot, to fiddle with their democracy.

He also told the Inquirer that not only did Cogniview not have any connection to the Zimbabwean elections, they also had no prior connection to Zimbabwe whatsoever. Ezer added that he was happy that people in Zimbabwe appreciated his company’s software, but that it was free and available to anyone, anywhere.

Ezer also said that he had been in contact with an exiled MDC activist by the name of Phil Matibe, who currently resides in the US, and that Mr Matibe had promised to discuss the matter with party leadership in order to secure a retraction of the accusations.