.jpg)
| |||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
By:
IBRAHIM ORUKO | |||||||||
| Posted:
Aug,28-2017 11:30:22
| |||||||||
|
Ballots used in the August 8 presidential election were not the ones printed by the Dubai firm contracted by IEBC, lawyers for Nasa leader Raila Odinga have said.
In his opening submission to the Supreme Court, lawyer James Orengo said analysis of the ballots used in the election had shown that most of them fell short of statutory security requirements, suggesting that they may have been printed locally.
SH2.5 BILLION
The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) gave the Sh2.5 billion ballots printing tender to al Ghurair of Dubai.
Mr Orengo, who is also the lawyer from Siaya, further said most of the documents IEBC had submitted to the court as instruments they used to declare the presidential results fell short of legal requirements.
Some of the security features that were to be contained in forms 34A and 34B are water marks, anti-copying features and others that can only detected under UV light.
Mr Orengo further told the court some of the documents submitted to the court by both the commission and the Jubilee Party were not properly serialised.
FEATURES
The documents, he said, were generated in a way that different from those in the polling stations.
He said some had mismatching names and did not have collation of constituency results as required by law, and that in some cases, ballots bore political party names which is not a legal requirement.
"The commission had specified these features to be on the two forms as a way of protecting the integrity of the elections," the lawyer said.
"But here is a case where these documents lack these features and were brought before the court."
TRIP
In fact, Mr Orengo said the commission had organised a trip to Dubai for stakeholders to ascertain that these features were ingrained in the ballot papers that were being printed at Al Ghurair.
"There were no proper forms 34A and 34B used in the General Election," Mr Orengo told the court.
The lawyer said elections were not about declarations of results and urged the court to have the courage to annul an election whose conduct was outside constitutional and statutory provisions.
He urged the court to be firm on matters related to the election as it is the only body that has the power to ensure that elections will be conducted in accordance with the law.
THE LAWS
"The electoral values captured in the constitution are not merely cosmetic values, they must applied in the conduct of the election," he said.
He told the judges they should not look at the numbers but whether the conduct of the election had met provisions as laid out in the Constitution and other relevant laws.
"When it comes to the provision of the Constitution, the court should have the courage to nullify such an election it that was not conducted in a free, fair and verifiable manner. If these principles are violated then it is not a minor transgression," he said.
| |||||||||
|
Source:
| |||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RSS