Court upholds Mutula Kilonzo Jr's Makueni election victory
Makueni Governor Mutula Kilonzo Jr.
The High Court Tuesday upheld the election of Makueni Governor Mutula Kilonzo Jr in a petition filed by former Kibwezi West MP Patrick Musimba.
Justice John Nyabuto said Dr Musimba had failed to provide evidence to show that Mr Kilonzo Jnr had not been elected validly as he dismissed the petition with Sh 3 million in costs.
Dr Musimba was running against Mr Kilonzo Jnr in last year’s General Election.
According to Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), Dr Musimba bagged 63,252 votes against 214, 088 votes polled by Mr Kilonzo Jnr.
Dr Musimba read mischief in the failure of 140 Kenya Integrated Election Management System (Kiems) kits in Kibwezi West Constituency when he challenged the outcome in court.
He argued that the Kiems kits failure had disenfranchised voters, reduced voter turnout in the region and affected his performance in the election.
The IEBC, however, maintained that the failure of the Kiems kits in the region had not affected the performance of Dr Musimba as it did not disenfranchise voters and that the agency had compensated the lost voting time by extending the timeline for voting in all the affected polling stations after it switched to manual voting.
Justice Nyabuto who had been picked by Chief Justice Martha Koome to handle the Makueni gubernatorial petition said that Mr Kilonzo Jnr had been validly elected.
He said that there was no mischief in the failure of the election technology in the affected polling stations and that Dr Musimba had failed to provide enough evidence to show Iebc had not conducted a free and fair and verifiable election.
Mr Nyabuto relied on the voter turnout across the county and borrowed heavily from the Azimio presidential petition to demonstrate that the failure of Kiems kits in Kibwezi West Constituency was unstable grounds to build the case.
The same way the Supreme Court in the Raila Odinga Vs IEBC petition had played down the effect of manual voting on the performance of candidates in Kibwezi West Constituency and Kakamega County where a total of 235 Kiems kits had failed, Mr Nyabuto said, voting manually in Kibwezi West Constituency had not affected the performance of Dr Musimba in the Makueni gubernatorial election. In any case, Mr Nyabuto further argued, the failure of the election technology should not have affected the petitioner alone.
“I did not find evidence that the use of manual voting affected the results. In fact, Kibwezi West Constituency that voted manually had a higher voter turnout than Kibwezi East Constituency where no Kiems kits failed,” Mr Nyabuto said.
