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- Jan 30, 2008
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CORD appoints poll petition team
By Geoffrey Mosoku
NAIROBI; KENYA: The Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) has appointed a team of lawyers who will spearhead their petition to contest Uhuru Kenyatta's election as president.
The team will be led renowned lawyer George Oraro with cabinet ministers Mutula Kilonzo, James Orengo and Ababu Namwamba and former AG Amos Wako being part of the legal team.
Others are Gitobu Imanyara, Pheroze Nowrojee, Chacha Odera, Ambrose Rachier and Paul Mwangi.
The three ministers will only provide technical support and advice to the team and will not be appearing before the court as litigants, since the law bars ministers from representing clients before court of law.
Oraro was Minister Henry Kosgey's lead lawyer in the ICC case which is credited for having been successful to help the minister to be cleared by The Hague based court.
CORD is planning to move to the Supreme Court on Monday morning to lodge their case, in which they are seeking to have Uhuru's declaration as president-elect nullified on grounds of anomalies that marred the poling and vote tallying exercises.
The coalition led by Raila Odinga argues that figures of votes attained by Uhuru were inflated in hundreds of thousands especially in Jubilee strongholds while they were denied their votes in Cord strongholds.
On Sunday, they lawyers who have been meeting since Saturday were finalising their papers and pieces of evidence to provide their case in court.
The Cord will be moving to the Supreme Court of Kenya which is established under Article 163 of the Constitution.
It comprises of the Chief Justice, who is the president of the Court, the Deputy Chief Justice, who is the deputy to the Chief Justice and the vice-president of the court and five other judges.
However, currently, the court does not have a deputy chief justice following the resignation of Nancy Baraza on grounds of misconduct last year. Justice Kalpna Rawal has been nominated to fill the slot but has to wait parliamentary approval through vetting.
The Supreme Court which is the only court with exclusive original jurisdiction to hear and determine disputes relating to the elections to the office of President under Article 140; is properly constituted for purposes of its proceedings when it has a composition of five judges.
Chief Justice Dr Willy Mutunga who is the president of the court, and Judges Dr Smokin Wanjala, Njoki Ndung'u, Philip Tunoi, Jackton Boma Ojwang and Mohamed Ibrahim will sit in the bench to hear Cord' petition.
The court will determine if the Issack Hassan led IEBC violated the law when the electronic voter identification devices failed and resorted to sue the manual register to identify voters, and if the collapse of the electronic voter tallying too was a negation of the elections act.
Although, the commission admitted that they systems had failed due to technical problems, Cord believes this was systematic to allow the interference of the electoral process.
"What Kenyans witnessed instead was the failure of virtually every instrument the IEBC had deployed for the election: The poll books, the servers, the telephonic transmission, the BVR – they all failed despite the billions spent on acquiring them," Cord leader Raila said.
Two days after the vote, the electronic tallying was discarded and counting begun afresh, manually.
"That too turned out to be a flawed exercise in which, among other things, there was massive tampering with the IEBC Final Register of Voters. Voter registration numbers were reduced in our strongholds and added to Jubilee strongholds!" Raila quipped on Saturday while reacting to the announcement of Uhuru as president-elect.
Standard Digital News - Kenya : CORD appoints poll petition team
By Geoffrey Mosoku
NAIROBI; KENYA: The Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) has appointed a team of lawyers who will spearhead their petition to contest Uhuru Kenyatta's election as president.
The team will be led renowned lawyer George Oraro with cabinet ministers Mutula Kilonzo, James Orengo and Ababu Namwamba and former AG Amos Wako being part of the legal team.
Others are Gitobu Imanyara, Pheroze Nowrojee, Chacha Odera, Ambrose Rachier and Paul Mwangi.
The three ministers will only provide technical support and advice to the team and will not be appearing before the court as litigants, since the law bars ministers from representing clients before court of law.
Oraro was Minister Henry Kosgey's lead lawyer in the ICC case which is credited for having been successful to help the minister to be cleared by The Hague based court.
CORD is planning to move to the Supreme Court on Monday morning to lodge their case, in which they are seeking to have Uhuru's declaration as president-elect nullified on grounds of anomalies that marred the poling and vote tallying exercises.
The coalition led by Raila Odinga argues that figures of votes attained by Uhuru were inflated in hundreds of thousands especially in Jubilee strongholds while they were denied their votes in Cord strongholds.
On Sunday, they lawyers who have been meeting since Saturday were finalising their papers and pieces of evidence to provide their case in court.
The Cord will be moving to the Supreme Court of Kenya which is established under Article 163 of the Constitution.
It comprises of the Chief Justice, who is the president of the Court, the Deputy Chief Justice, who is the deputy to the Chief Justice and the vice-president of the court and five other judges.
However, currently, the court does not have a deputy chief justice following the resignation of Nancy Baraza on grounds of misconduct last year. Justice Kalpna Rawal has been nominated to fill the slot but has to wait parliamentary approval through vetting.
The Supreme Court which is the only court with exclusive original jurisdiction to hear and determine disputes relating to the elections to the office of President under Article 140; is properly constituted for purposes of its proceedings when it has a composition of five judges.
Chief Justice Dr Willy Mutunga who is the president of the court, and Judges Dr Smokin Wanjala, Njoki Ndung'u, Philip Tunoi, Jackton Boma Ojwang and Mohamed Ibrahim will sit in the bench to hear Cord' petition.
The court will determine if the Issack Hassan led IEBC violated the law when the electronic voter identification devices failed and resorted to sue the manual register to identify voters, and if the collapse of the electronic voter tallying too was a negation of the elections act.
Although, the commission admitted that they systems had failed due to technical problems, Cord believes this was systematic to allow the interference of the electoral process.
"What Kenyans witnessed instead was the failure of virtually every instrument the IEBC had deployed for the election: The poll books, the servers, the telephonic transmission, the BVR – they all failed despite the billions spent on acquiring them," Cord leader Raila said.
Two days after the vote, the electronic tallying was discarded and counting begun afresh, manually.
"That too turned out to be a flawed exercise in which, among other things, there was massive tampering with the IEBC Final Register of Voters. Voter registration numbers were reduced in our strongholds and added to Jubilee strongholds!" Raila quipped on Saturday while reacting to the announcement of Uhuru as president-elect.
Standard Digital News - Kenya : CORD appoints poll petition team
