State did not engineer nullification of my victory, Lagdera MP says

Lagdera Member of Parliament Mohamed Abdulkadir Hussein has expressed his displeasure with the High Court’s ruling that disqualified his August win.

In a quick reaction to the court’s decision, the ODM MP said that he will appeal the ruling at the Court of Appeal.

The MP said in a press address on Friday at the Serena Hotel that the court ought to have dismissed some of the pieces of evidence that were submitted by the petitioners.

“We are perplexed by the actors of today’s judgment regarding our election…The ruling was not in our favour but we will soldier on. We will definitely appeal. Already a stay order has been granted pending an appeal,” the MP said.

He said the ruling has brought to a standstill some of the works that had already started back in his constituency.

The MP assured the residents of Lagdera that he was still their MP pending the appeal case which will be presented by his lawyer “within the shortest time”.

“I have instructed my lawyers to move expeditiously to the Court of Appeal regarding this outcome and recover our victory,” he said.

He added that the court nullified his win which had been decided by more than 4,000 voters, hence, overturning the people’s will.

The MP said that the court’s decision was based on votes from eight polling stations, some of which are his strongholds.

According to the MP, the court dismissed the petitioner’s claims that the voting in some voting stations was marred by violence but still ruled against him.

Eight polling stations

“Eight polling stations were scrutinised and the difference between the KIEMS kit and the ballots was 120. I was ahead by 1,050 votes but the court used those small differences to throw away the entire votes from my stronghold,” he lamented.

In the August election outcome, the MP garnered 5,939 votes, while the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) candidate Abdiqani Zeitun had 4,863.

The petition was filed by Mr Zeitun.

The also dismissed the possibility of the state having a hand in the two cases where the ODM party of Mr Raila Odinga lost two seats, including the Magarini seat.

“I think it happened by just a coincidence that today two cases have been nullified and both are from ODM. I don’t think the government or anybody else might have had an upper hand,” he said.

Magarini MP Harrison Kombe of ODM lost the seat as well due to irregularities that were noted by the court.