Lands minister James Orengo gestures during a news conference at Serena
Hotel, Nairobi. He said Cord will file a petition to challenge the
election of Uhuru Kenyatta as president on Saturday March 15, 2013
ANTHONY OMUYA
Daily Nation
03/15/2013The Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (Cord) has said it will
file a petition challenging the election of Uhuru Kenyatta as president
on Saturday.
Cord's lawyer James Orengo said the civil society
has filed many applications in court and the coalition wants to file its
challenge separately.
He said the move would allow
Kenyans understand the petition merits and why Cord was disputing the
results announced as by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries
Commission (IEBC).
“We have been informed that
several other cases were being filed today at the Supreme Court mostly
by civil society. That is why we have pushed ours to Saturday so that
the public could get a chance to follow it without it being lumped with
other petitions, which were being filed today (Friday),” he said during a
news conference at the Serena Hotel, Nairobi.
Mr Orengo said Chief Justice
Willy Mutunga, had given them an undertaking that the court registry
would be open on a Saturday, adding that the petition was still within
the seven-day window for filing presidential petitions, after the
results had been announced by the IEBC.
“The Chief Justice has given us
an undertaking that the Supreme Court registry would be open over the
weekend, so our petition will still be filed within the seven-day
timeline.
"Dr Mutunga released new rules
stating that petitions filed between the first and last day of the seven
day period would be deemed to have been filed on the last day, and
hence our petition is within the statutory limit and we have not run out
of time,” he said.
One of the cases filed at the
Supreme Court and which may have pushed Cord to postpone theirs, is one
by Jubilee supporters, questioning IEBC decision to include rejected
votes in calculating the percentage due to each of the eight
presidential candidates.
The petition filed by Moses
Kuria and Denis Itumbi, of the Team Uhuru, one of president-elect Uhuru
Kenyatta, campaign teams and Florence Sergon, argue that the erroneous
inclusion of the rejected votes diminished each of the candidate’s
percentage of votes.
They are seeking a declaration
that the percentage of votes received by each candidate should be in
proportion to the total valid votes cast.