Remember Raila did not go to Supreme Court with hopes of winning

If you are a NASA supporter it is important to remember that Raila never went to the Supreme Court with hopes that he will be able to overturn the reelection of President elect Uhuru Kenyatta, but “to lay before the world the making of a computer generated leadership”. In an address to the Nation aired on August 16th 2017, Raila explained that after the government decided to crack down on KNHC and AfriCOG, the coalition opted to head to Supreme Court “to show the world what tanspired in the fraud”.

The reason Raila said he had no hopes of winning the case is because during the campaigns, President Uhuru Kenyatta had appeared to threaten the judiciary, and after the seeming threats from the President, IEBC had lost no case against the coalition as the country approached the general elections. Some of the cases that NASA had lost against the IEBC after the alleged threat was an appeal that IEBC lodged against a high court decision to nullify the ballot printing tender that had been awarded to Al Ghurair, a counter appeal by NASA in which NASA wanted the ruling that Al Ghurair had no direct connections to State House be overturned, and a case in which NASA wanted IEBC to put in place electronic backup system for voter identification.

After Raila announced that NASA will move to Supreme Court to show the world just how massive the riggings were blatantly carried out, I wrote an article arguing that most likely Jubilee laid a trap for NASA to end up at the Supreme Court, an article that received a comment from one of our readers through our Facebook Group as follows, “I am sure NASA knows that they will lose in court even if they have concrete evidence. This is because of the deep rooted corruption in kenya, but what NASA wants to do is just to prove to the world through court how rigging was done”.

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So it is clear that by the time NASA was moving to the Supreme Court, the coalition’s intention was not so much as to win the case, but to prove to us the inhabitants of the world that the elections were thoroughly rigged. Something NASA supporters seem to have lost memory of.

I am not a judge nor am I a lawyer so I have no authority to comment on how weak or strong the NASA case was before the Supreme Court, but I am part of the world that NASA wanted to be convinced that there were blatant irregularities that even a baby cannot be blind to. As part of the world that NASA wanted to convince that the riggings were so obvious, rampart and done in total disregard of the Constitution and Electoral Laws, I must say that after the end of the hearings at the Supreme Court, I am not fully convinced.

During the hearing, NASA Lawyers managed to demonstrate that there were a number of glitches, a number of malpractices, and a number of instances where Electoral Laws and the Constitution were disregarded. More specifically, NASA was able to demonstrate that the Constitutional requirement that Returning Officers including the Presidential Returning Officer must verify results before declaring them was not adhered to, and that in several instances Statutory documents were not handled according to Elections Regulations and Laws. However, despite those demonstrations, NASA Lawyers were not able to Show that those irregularities were sufficient to significantly affect the number of votes cast in favor for each of the eight presidential candidates.

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Jubilee Lawyers were able to take advantage of the lack of demonstration that votes were significantly affected, and asked the Supreme Court to dismiss NASA Petition based on that fact. NASA Lawyers especially Paul Mwangi however argued very clearly that elections can be nullified either when the constitutional and  electoral laws are disregarded, or when votes are significantly affected. IEBC and Chebukati Lawyers on the other hand argued that they both followed the constitution and the electoral laws and also maintained the integrity of the vote throughout. Whether NASA Lawyers or Jubilee Lawyers are the ones that managed to convinced the Judges is something we will know on Friday

Talking for myself, the lawyers left me just where I was before the case began – I am still not sure whether the reported irregularities are sufficient to overturn the reelection of President Uhuru Kenyatta. That is, I am not convinced that the irregularities were as blatant, as rampart and as massive as NASA had alleged. There was no bombshell – and as many on Twitter were asking SC James Orengo, I also ask, “where was the bombshell”?

Odipo Riaga
Managing Editor at KachTech Media
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