House report fingers IEBC's Hassan in irregular hiring of lawyers

The 2013 presidential election petition has been thrust back into the limelight by a National Assembly committee, which has revealed that lawyers for the electoral commission were single-sourced.

In its report tabled in the House last week, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) blames Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Chairman Issack Hassan for personally appointing the lawyers, involving himself in procurement matters, which is the mandate of the secretariat.

“Mr Hassan is directly involved in procurement by personally appointing lawyers to act for the commission in the presidential petition at the Supreme Court,” says the report.

The petition was filed by Cord leader Raila Odinga against Jubilee candidate Uhuru Kenyatta, who had been declared winner by the IEBC, and went on to be confirmed as the duly elected President of Kenya.

Apart from the alleged irregular procurement of lawyers for the commission, the hefty legal fees the leading lawyers for the IEBC — Mr Aurelio Rebelo, Mr Ahmednasir Abdullahi and their teams — slapped the electoral agency with, also raised eyebrows. The reported figure is Sh380 million.

Conflicting opinions have been made over the way the Supreme Court handled the petition.

Not even Chief Justice Willy Mutunga, who led the team of six judges that delivered the landmark ruling, has been willing to comment on it, saying in a recent interview, he would do so when he writes his memoirs.

The PAC, which is chaired by Rarieda MP Nicholas Gumbo, presented the report in the House following a special audit on the procurement of electronic equipment used in the 2013 elections.

The report says Mr Hassan and IEBC commissioners Mohammed Alawi and Thomas Letangule canvassed for one of the bidders for the biometric voter registration (BVR) devices, Face Technologies Ltd.