Details have emerged on how the Jubilee government may be seeking to block attempts of challenging President Uhuru Kenyatta's re-election in the Supreme Court.
How Jubilee plans to block petitions challenging Uhuru's win in Supreme Court
There are less than 48 hours to the lapse of the Constitutional deadline for lodging such petitions
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In a campaign akin to the one carried out after the Aug 8 election, the government has launched another round of crackdown on non-governmental organisations deemed to be opposition-friendly, a move seen as a bid to pre-empt the filing of any petition challenging Mr. Kenyatta’s re-election before tomorrow’s deadline.
The NGO Co-ordination Board has already summoned officials of Inuka Kenya, Katiba Institute and Muslims for Human Rights (Muhuri) — groups that have been critical of the Jubilee administration and often viewed as pro-opposition.
Detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigation and officers from the Kenya Revenue Authority are expected in Monday’s meeting.
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An official of one of the organisations told the Sunday Nation that they were indeed preparing to move to court tomorrow to challenge the October 26 polls boycotted by opposition leader Raila Odinga, claiming that the electoral commission had shown open bias in favour of Mr Kenyatta, among other grounds.
The executive director of the Board Mahamed Fazul has denied reports that his actions had everything to do with plans to challenge Mr Kenyatta’s win even though the timing of his actions raise eyebrows.
“These are regular compliance visits. People are reading too much into them,” he said.
Jubilee party is convinced that there are such plans to file a petition before midnight Monday.
“Nasa is working with two NGOs and they are getting a citizen to go to court represented by both organisations. They have asked them to sue IEBC, Jubilee and include Nasa as the respondents so that it looks like they are not part of it,” Senate Majority Leader Kipchumba Murkomen said on Friday.
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His counterpart in the National Assembly Aden Duale said he was also aware of plans by the Kenya Human Rights Commission to file a petition.
However, Pokot South MPDavid Pkosing's decision to move to the Supreme Court in order to have it rule that the election of President Kenyatta was legitimate even without some of the opposition strongholds casting their vote, could avert one of the possible grounds of such a petition.
Siaya, Kisumu, Migori and Homa Bay were among the regions that heeded to Mr. Odinga's call to boycott the election re-run.
A petitioner would, predictably, therefore want to argue that since the Constitution requires that presidential election be held in the entire 290 constituencies, Mr Kenyatta’s win falls short of this.
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