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Thirdway Alliance Party Leader Ekuru Aukot/CFM/FILE - SAM WANJOHI

AUGUST 9 COUNTDOWN

Aukot files petition to stop ballot printing citing shambolic vetting of presidential candidates

In a petition filed on Monday, Party Leader Ekuru Aukot has faulted the Commission for conducting the exercise without verifying the presidential and independent candidates’ supporter lists and accompanying identity documents.

NAIROBI, Kenya Jun 27 — The Thirdway Alliance Party has filed a petition at the High Court seeking orders to nullify the presidential nominations which were conducted by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) between May 29 – June 7, 2022.

In a petition filed on Monday, Party Leader Ekuru Aukot has faulted the Commission for conducting the exercise without verifying the presidential and independent candidates’ supporter lists and accompanying identity documents.

Consequently, pending the hearing and determination of his suit, Aukot has pleaded with the High Court to grant them conservatory orders barring the electoral body from “printing the presidential ballot papers until the supporters lists and accompanying Identity documents are verified and judgement is delivered by the court”.

“Our party  undertook investigations, auditing of the process and due diligence on the purported presidential nomination process and we established that the whole exercise was a sham replete with bias, discrimination, inconsistency and failure to equitably apply IEBC’s own guidelines and regulations,” Aukot said.

The Commission cleared four presidential candidates to vie in the presidential contest slated for August 9 out of a pool of 16 shortlisted candidates.

Those cleared are Raila Odinga (Azimio La Umoja One Kenya), William Ruto (Kenya Kwanza Alliance), George Wajackoyah of Roots Party and David Waihiga of Agano Party.

Aukot was among those who were locked out for failing to meet statutory requirements set out by the Commission.

He subsequently lodged an appeal with the Commission’s Disputes Tribunal but his case was thrown out.

In his latest suit, Aukot has singled out the Presidential Returning Officer and the Commission’s Chair Wafula Chebukati and accused him of overseeing what he described as a shambolic process.

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“The IEBC and one Wafula Chebukati, the presidential returning officer deliberately carried out a subjective selection process instead of a nomination process,” he said.

He accused Chebukati of violating the Constitution and the Elections Act by failing to verify ID copies against the lists of supporters submitted by the aspirants but proceeded to issue nomination certificates to some pre-selected candidates.

Aukot argued that the Commission has failed to make public the breakdown of the verification results and the methodology used despite claiming to have verified the copies of the identity documents.

“While we requested for the verification report on two occasions, IEBC flatly refused to share the report thereby violating Article 35 of the Constitution on the right to information,” he said.

“We have information, which we shall table before court that will demonstrate that none of the presidential aspirants who submitted identity documents copies had been given the sameby Kenyans,” Aukot noted.

He referenced the Commission’s failure to verify Punguza Mizigo Kenya’s 1.4 million signatures in 2019 due to what was them described by IEBC as lack of internal capacity to verify signatures.

“We are keen to find out how the Commission miraculously managed to verify over 3.2 million signatures and 3.2 million copies of identity documents in less than 5 days,” Aukot said.

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