The pre-trial conference is intended to determine if all the parties have been served with the necessary filings, hear preliminary objections and possibly consolidate the suits/FILE
NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov 13 – The Supreme Court will on Tuesday hold a pre-trial conference for the three presidential petitions that have been have lodged before it.
The pre-trial conference is intended to determine if all the parties have been served with the necessary filings, decide on the running order of oral submissions and possibly consolidate suits.
It is also at the pre-trial conference that the court will decide who among the applicants will be enjoined either as an interested party or friend of the court.
The court has seven days left to hear and determine the petition with the constitutional deadline lapsing at midnight next Monday.
The three suits the court will address itself to Tuesday, are those filed by Njonjo Mue and Khelef Khalifa, Harun Mwau and that for the Institute for Democratic Governance.
Mue, Khalifa and Mwau want the outcome of the October 26 fresh presidential poll invalidated while the Institute for Democratic Governance wants Opposition leaders Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka held in contempt and found guilty of electoral malpractices for actively seeking to derail the poll.
According the Supreme Court rules, the bench is immediately thereafter expected to hear the petitions day-to-day until it retires to consider and then render its decision(s) on the matters placed before it.
The three suits were filed last Monday with Mue, Khalifa and Mwau who have filed two separate suits calling into question the legitimacy of the October 26 poll from which Odinga withdrew on account of what he described as a lack of good faith on the part of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission.
And in pursuit of an invalidation of the election, Mue and Khalifa, have made reference to the IEBC’s own Chairman Wafula Chebukati’s questioning of the poll’s credibility just days prior and a leaked memo whose concerns on the conduct of the invalidated August 8 presidential poll, they submit, was not satisfactorily addressed as to engender public trust in the process.
READ: Leaked memo, Akombe’s resignation to haunt IEBC at the Supreme Court
Mwau who first sought to stop the process in the High Court, has submitted that the IEBC failed the constitutional test for a credible poll from the onset by first failing to carry out nominations.
The Institute for Democratic Governance rests on the other side of the pendulum swing and argues that Odinga and Musyoka conspired against the Supreme Court’s September 1 directive that a fresh presidential poll be held within 60 days of its decision as per the Constitution.
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