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Supreme Court Rejects Ruto’s Request In Presidential Petition

SK 3 years ago 2 min read

President-elect William Ruto’s requests to the Supreme Court to bar six members of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission from taking part in the presidential election petition contesting his victory were denied.
Through his attorneys, Ruto claimed that only IEBC chair Wafula Chebukati should be permitted to speak on behalf of the team in court.

He claimed that Raila Odinga had mistakenly placed other commissioners (Abdi Guliye, Boya Molu, Juliana Cherera, Francis Wanderi, Irene Masit, and Justus Nyang’aya) as respondents in his case.
He insisted that some of the commissioners should be designated as petitioners rather than respondents because they were allegedly serving as agents for the Azimio la Umoja One Kenya coalition in the case.

“In the true sense, Mr Molu, Prof Guliye, Ms Cherera, and Mr Nyang’aya are second tier petitioners so enjoined to enable the petitioners to have another set of petitioners albeit classified as respondents,” lawyer Kithure Kindiki told the court.
“They intend to use their response to advance accusations, new claims and innuendoes solely intended to prejudice Dr Ruto,” added Ruto’s lawyer in his affidavit.

According to the president-elect’s legal team, Article 140 of the constitution doesn’t allow petitioners to include individual commissioners in the case.

Ruto’s Deputy Chief agent Josphat Nanok also said in his affidavit that, “Accordingly, the four commissioners are in true sense petitioners and proxies of the Petitioners ingeniously included to be part of the Respondents so as to compromise Dr Ruto’s defence.”