Nasa supporters undeterred by long wait for petition

Supporters of Nasa presidential candidate Raila Odinga on Friday thronged both Uhuru Park and the Supreme Court building as early as 9am and were still there late in the evening when the petition was filed.

The opposition said it is confident it has watertight, incontrovertible evidence that IEBC did not do a good job, and that President Uhuru Kenyatta was not validly elected.

Nasa will be relying on evidence it alleges shows polling stations that did not exist and which Mr Odinga claimed were used to inflate figures in favour of President Kenyatta.

RESULTS
Some forms 34A and 34B, which Nasa alleges were missing, will be used to argue that the results that IEBC was streaming were unverified and therefore illegal.

“We will show how they shamelessly cooked results from non-existent polling stations and fake un-gazetted presiding and returning officers.

"They gave figures from non-existent forms 34A and 34B; they scrambled to manufacture such forms; switched vote numbers and how they openly swindled to reach predetermined consistent vote numbers.

"They cooked numbers to the extent that vote tallies often surpassed registered voters in polling stations,” Mr Odinga said when he announced his intention to file the petition on Wednesday.

RESPONDENTS
Mr Odinga has also questioned what he said was a constant pattern of the gap between him and President Kenyatta, which he argued was unchanged at 11 per cent throughout the release of the results.

Nasa is required to pay Sh1,734,250 million to file the suit before serving the respondents by Sunday.

Here is the break down: Sh500,000 for lodging the petition; Sh1m for security; Sh8,050 for affidavits; Annexures Sh225,000 and a service fee of Sh1,200.

The respondents, who in this case are President Kenyatta, his deputy William Ruto, IEBC and its chairman Wafula Chebukati in his capacity as the presidential election returning officer, will have to file their responses by August 24.

COURT
This will in turn pave way for a pre-trial conference on August 26, where the Court will and parties will frame contested and uncontested issues in the petition, consider consolidation in cases of more than one petition, and direct IEBC on handling of election materials and documents relevant to the case.

After the pre-trial conference, and unless determined otherwise by the court, the hearing of a petition once commenced shall proceed uninterrupted on a day to day basis until its conclusion.

The court, in its decision which must be rendered by September 1, may uphold the election of President Kenyatta like it did in 2013, or declare it invalid and order fresh elections, which must be held by October 30.

The decision of the Supreme Court is final.