Court
rejects key applications from Raila team. By Ally Jamah and Wahome Thuku |
Nairobi,
Kenya: Judicial staff kicked off rigorous scrutiny of crucial
forms submitted by electoral officials countrywide at the Kenyatta International
Conference Centre as Prime Minister Raila Odinga lost key applications
at Supreme Court. Raila and his Coalition for Reforms and Democracy failed to clinch the court’s orders for forensic audit of Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) IT system in a bid to unearth if there were electronic manipulation of the March 4 election results. The PM also suffered another setback when the court rejected an 839-page affidavit filed in his petition, raising new allegations of electoral irregularities. The court ruled that the affidavit had irregularly been filed without permission of the court and contrary to the rules of engagement. Supreme Court Judge Justice Philip Tunoi, who read the ruling on the affidavits on behalf of his colleagues, dismissed the ‘late’ affidavits with costs during the pre-trial conference. In total the court rejected seven of Raila’s affidavits over technicalities related to the time of filing and how they were filed. Tunoi said parties have a duty to ensure they comply with respective timelines and not waste time for the court and other parties to the petitions. Also before the same court a bid by a civil society group Katiba Watch led by Prof Yash pal Ghai had its application seeking to be enjoined in the case thrown out. But even as the Supreme Court was ruling on the applications by the PM, judicial clerks were still re-tallying votes from 22 polling stations. Also at the same venue other judicial staff were engaged in scrutinising Forms 34 and 36 from all the 290 constituencies as well as from the Diaspora as ordered by the court. Form 34 bears the results from polling stations while Form 36 is an aggregate of Form 34s at the constituency level. The painstaking effort aims at verifying if there were any inconsistencies between the number of registered voters per polling area and the tallies signed and forwarded to the National Tallying Centre by respective Returning Officers countrywide. Registered voters The scrutiny involving records returned by the presiding officers in all the 33,400 polling stations went on simultaneously with that of fresh tallying of votes in the 22 constituencies CORD suspects the number of people IEBC reported to have voted may have exceeded the registered voters in that particular station. Last evening, the President of the Supreme Court, Justice Willy Mutunga, who is leading the six-judge-bench, toured KICC to assess the fresh verification process the judges ordered on Monday |
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