Kenya's Supreme Court judges retreat ahead of landmark ruling on Presidential petition

david nganga

August 30, 2017 1:33 PM

All eyes are now on the seven bench judge led by Chief Justice David Maraga ahead of the ruling that is due to be delivered on Friday.

Supreme Court judges in Kenya are set retire to private sessions to prepare their ruling on the presidential petition filed by NASA leader Raila Odinga challenging the declaration of Mr. Kenyatta’s as winner of the August 8 polls.

The seven bench judge led by Chief Justice David Maraga will analyze the submissions and arguments presented in court before making the landmark ruling that is due to be delivered on Friday.

In that period, Justice Maraga and his team are expected to peruse more than 50,000 pages of documents filed by the parties to the petition and deliver a judgment that will determine whether Mr Kenyatta shall be sworn in for a second term as president, or order a fresh election.

The closing arguments on Tuesday evening marked the end of intense hearings and applications that lasted two days since Monday.

Lawyers representing Raila Odinga(the petitioner) poked holes into the validity of the forms 34A — which contain presidential results from the polling stations — he was supplied with after the polls and what the electoral agency showed in the public portal insisting the results were manipulated to favour Mr Kenyatta.

The law stipulates that forms 34A ought to compile form 34B, which contains tallies from constituencies.

Form 34C contains the final presidential results as declared by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) chairman at the national tallying centre.

Mr Odinga argued that the IEBC violated the law in declaring Mr. Kenyatta winner of the polls as the commission had compiled forms 34B and 34C without the primary document — form 34A.

The IEBC on Monday claimed that forms 34A were inconsequential in the final tally of the presidential ballots and that Mr Kenyatta was validly declared the winner with 8.2 million votes with Mr Odinga coming in second with 6.7 million votes.

Even then, Attorney General Githu Muigai asked the judges to read the Constitution together with the Elections Act when they retire to prepare a judgment and to ignore invitations by the parties to consider the ‘spirit of the Constitution’.

david nganga