Long week for Uhuru, Raila as case begins

The eyes of Kenyans are this week fixed on the six Supreme Court judges who on Monday narrow down the sticky issues in the petition that Prime Minister Raila Odinga has filed against President-elect Uhuru Kenyatta.

It is going to be a long week for Mr Odinga — the Cord presidential candidate — and Mr Kenyatta — who contested on the Jubilee Coalition ticket — as they await the verdict of the Supreme Court.

The judges, led by Chief Justice Willy Mutunga, could either dismiss the petition, order a re-count of the presidential votes, settle on a re-run, or rule that the whole process begins afresh with the registration of voters.

On Sunday, President-elect Kenyatta, his deputy, Mr William Ruto, Mr Odinga and Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka all urged Kenyans to stay calm and wait for the Supreme Court to determine the petition.

Speaking in Eldoret, Mr Kenyatta appealed for calm as the country waits for the verdict. “We will talk more after the ruling date,” he said.

In Kisumu, Mr Odinga told a congregation at the lakeside city’s ACK Church that Kenyans should remain peaceful in prayer. (Read: For Kibaki and Raila, the end of a love-hate political union)

Public discussion

“The case in court is not a subject of public discussion but we believe that the truth which will set Kenya free will be known when the verdict is delivered,” he said.

At the Nairobi Baptist Church, Mr Musyoka, who was Mr Odinga’s running mate in the March 4 election, called for peace ahead of what he said was a crucial week.

“It is important at this time that people get together and pray so that we can maintain that unity of purpose as Kenyans,” he said.

On Sunday, it emerged that the Supreme Court plans to sit through Good Friday with the hope of delivering a ruling on Saturday.

The decision could, however, come without the six judges giving the reasons for reaching the verdict.

A temporary time table and a media brief gave the insight of how the three cases which have been filed by different litigants will be heard and determined.

On Monday the judges will have a pre-trial hearing of the three petitions challenging the validity of the presidential results and zero down on the main issues raised by the litigants.

Apart from the petition filed by Mr Odinga challenging the declaration of Mr Kenyatta as winner of the presidential election, there is another filed by a civil society group, the African Centre for Open Governance (Africog). (Read: Cord criticises Kibaki military goodbye, says he jumped the gun)

Also before the court is a petition filed by some members of Mr Kenyatta’s campaign team, social media activists Dennis Itumbi and Moses Kuria and a third person, challenging the inclusion of spoilt ballots in the calculation of votes attained by each candidate.

The objections raised by Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) and its chairman Issack Hassan, will also be narrowed down to what will be argued verbally in court.

“The court shall conduct a pre-trial conference with all the parties in the petitions to frame contested and uncontested issues in the petition; consider consolidation of petitions in cases where more than one petition is filed; Court to give directions or orders in relation to any interlocutory matters; and court to give any suitable directions for the expeditious disposal of the petition or any outstanding issues,” a brief from the Judiciary said.

During the sitting today, instructions on additional evidence and the volume of documents by the interested parties will also be given.

The actual hearings of the petition are expected to start on Thursday and could continue un-interrupted until concluded.

“The Court shall, within two days of the pre-trial conference, commence the hearing of the petition. Save in exceptional circumstances as may be determined by the Court, the hearing of a petition once commenced shall proceed uninterrupted on a day to day basis until its conclusion,” the document stated.

The brief further said that the Supreme Court does not necessarily have to give reasons for the verdict on the day it delivers the ruling.

“The court may, at the close of any hearing, give its decision but reserve its reasons and in any such case the reasons may be delivered in court by any judge whether or not he sat at the hearing,” it said.

In the first petition, Mr Odinga who contested for presidency on a Cord ticket, argues that the IEBC’s decision to declare Mr Kenyatta as winner should be invalidated because some places had more votes cast than the registered number of voters.

Declared winner

Mr Kenyatta, of TNA in the Jubilee Coalition, was declared winner on March 9 after garnering 6,173,433 votes against Mr Odinga’s 5,340,546, but Mr Odinga of ODM in Cord disputed the results.

IEBC announced that Mr Kenyatta’s tally meant he had scored 50.07 per cent of the total votes cast, enough to avoid a runoff.

The second petition was filed by Ms Gladwell Otieno of AfriCog and Zahid Rajan who have argued that the election was not free and fair because there were “abnormal and unexplained patterns of additions and subtractions of entries in the voter register.”

The third challenge came from Mr Itumbi, Mr Kuria, a TNA strategist and Ms Florence Sergon.

The bench will be made up of Dr Mutunga and judges Njoki Ndung’u, Smokin Wanjala, Jackton Ojwang, Philip Tunoi and Mohamed Ibrahim.