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2017 KENYA ELECTIONS

Court dismisses petition against Nyong’o, slaps Ranguma with Sh5mn bill

In his ruling, Justice David Majanja struck our most of Ranguma’s prayers including allegations of vote stuffing and failure to include the outcome in five polling stations/OJWANG JOE

NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan 3 – The High Court has dismissed the petition where former Kisumu Governor Jack Ranguma was challenging the election of Anyang’ Nyong’o.

Ranguma was further slapped with a Sh5 million bill.

In his ruling, Justice David Majanja struck out most of Ranguma’s prayers including allegations of vote stuffing and failure to include five stations.

“The substantial issue that arose, though not pleaded, related to the collation and tally of results from the 5 polling stations which were omitted from Form 37B for Kisumu East Constituency and Form 37C,” he stated.

“These were Mamboleo Market (No. 3), Koyango Market (No. 3), Nyalenda ‘A’ Community Hall (No. 4) and Nyalenda ‘A’ Community Hall (No. 5) and Akado Polytechnic (No. 2) all in Kisumu East Constituency.”

Majanja stated that the five stations didn’t have any significant change to the outcome of the election.

“At the end of the day, the failure to record the results of the 5 polling stations within Kisumu East Constituency on Form 37B and Form 37C would not in any way affect the results as the petitioner was the winner of the election even assuming that the petitioner would have garnered all the votes in those stations,” he said.

Ranguma had made an application for audit, scrutiny, recount and re-tallying of the votes, a petition which was dismissed in a ruling made earlier on 16th November 2017.

Majanja today ruled that the allegations made by the petitioner were broad as he failed to identify the specific polling stations where the errors, malpractices and irregularities took place.

“At paragraph 28 of the petition, the petition averred that there was massive and deliberate failure of operational transparency in that the IEBC deliberately and intentionally disregarded the decision in the Maina Kiai Case (Supra) and that it failed to electronically collate, tally and transmit the results accurately in accordance with the court decision,” he declared.

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He further dismissed an evidence adduce to the court by a telecommunication expert Levy Oduor who said that he had an access to IEBC servers and detected some deletions of the files.

The Judge struck out most of Ranguma’s prayers including allegations of vote stuffing and failure to include the outcome in five polling stations.

“He further averred that the IEBC colluded with the 3rd respondent in ejecting the petitioner’s agents from various polling stations within the County. 46. I have already dealt with the issue of collating, tallying and transmitting the results in the context of the Maina Kiai Case (Supra). I once again emphasise that electronic transmission of the gubernatorial results was not a mandatory requirement under section 39 of the Act,” he said.

Majanja stated that the five stations didn’t have any significant change to the outcome in the five polling stations.

The court dismissed the petition and awarded the 1st respondent IEBC and 2nd respondent the County Returning Officer Sh2.5 million, the court further awarded the 3rd respondent Prof Anyang Nyong’o Sh2.5 million.

However, speaking to the press after the court ruling, Ranguma announced that he is contemplating moving to Court of Appeal since he was not satisfied by the ruling.

He said that he will be engaging his lawyer for further direction and told his supporters to give him time.

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