NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan 24 – Narc Kenya has said that it would appeal a High Court ruling that saw it lose its push for a larger share of Party of National Unity (PNU) allocation from the Political Parties Fund, getting Sh2.6 million out of Sh48.7 million earlier allocated to the coalition.
On Friday, the Registrar of Political Parties Lucy Njuguna finally distributed the funds allocated to the 13 political parties which form the umbrella PNU party.
The affidavit outlined the distribution of the Sh48.7 million to the individual member parties in accordance with the Political Parties Act and in compliance with a judgment delivered by Lady Justice Kalpana Rawal in November last year.
PNU gets Sh23.4 million, Narc-K Sh2.9 million, Democratic Party (DP) Sh3.5 million, KANU Sh6.9 million, Safina Party Sh4.3 million and TIP party gets Sh1 million.
However Narc Kenya chairperson Martha Karua said her party deserves to get the lion’s share of the fund since it sponsored 34 MPs in the coalition.
Ms Karua said; “The High Court ruling was wrong in my view; we have filed a notice of appeal. Everybody in Kenya including the courts knows that there were joint nominations by parties, everybody knows that PNU has no MPs that came from PNU as a party except Mwai Kibaki (and) all the others came from the parties.”
The number of votes garnered for the Parliamentary seats was 2,036,952 and the party managed to get 1,626,893 for the civic seats countrywide. In total the number of votes garnered by PNU was 3,663,845 representing 48.1 percent.
It has been PNU’s contention that all the corporate parties under it, which vied for various elective positions be answerable to the umbrella party since they got nomination under its banner.
Narc-Kenya through lawyer Cecil Miller had last year challenged the decision by the Registrar to allow Party of National Unity (PNU) to distribute the funds. Mr Miller told the judge that PNU had allocated itself 60 per cent of the funds released by the Government.
The party urged the High Court to order the Registrar of Political Parties, to administer the distribution of the Sh200 million allocated to PNU in terms of the Political Parties Act 2007.
But the Registrar opposed the case, saying the court should not interfere in the internal wrangles of political parties over the funds.
The case has been in court since 2009.
Narc-Kenya asked the court to quash a decision by the registrar to entrust PNU with the mandate to distribute the funds.
Section 30 of the Political Parties Act gives the Registrar the power to administer parties and further stipulates that 15 percent of the money should be distributed equally among the political parties while 80 percent should be distributed proportionally according to the total number of votes secured by each political party at the last General Election.
In her judgment of November 19, 2010 Justice Rawal directed the Registrar to comply with Section 30 (3) (b) of the Political Parties Act.
Under this section a party with affiliate political parties shall distribute the funds allocated in accordance with the number of votes garnered by parliamentary and civic candidates.
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