Applicants Karungo Thang ’ wa and Mike Sonko under siege.
UDA’s Kiambu senatorial applicant Karungo Thang ’ wa( left wing) and Mombasa gubernatorial applicant Mike Sonko whom pleaders believe are infelicitous to dispute or hold a public office. A three- judge bench will determine the desires.
Chief Justice Martha Koome has appointed a three- judge bench to determine eight cases involving a decision of the electoral commission to allow persons with active felonious and corruption cases to run for optional positions in the August 9 choices.
The bench will be presided by Justice David Majanja while the other members are judges Chacha Mwita and Mugure Thande.
The judges have also been assigned with determining whether persons impeached from a public office can battle for any other optional position and whether persons with questionable integrity should be allowed to dispute.
The desires were filed independently in different courts. The pleaders include civil society groups and individualities similar as rights activist Okiya Omtatah, Inuka Kenya na Sisi organisation, counsel Edward Asitiba and Mukidi Jwenge. Others are Kelvin Njui, Silvester Kipkemoi, Ndoro Kayuga and Kituo cha Sheria.
Deputy Registrar of the indigenous and mortal Rights Division in Milimani law court Njeri Thuku Tuesday directed the parties to file clones of their suppliances before June 6. The bench will give directions in due course, she said.
Sonko’s Mombasa shot
Four of the cases are against former Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko’s shot to battle for the Mombasa governorship and one is against UDA’s Kiambu senatorial applicant Karungo Thang ’ wa.
The pleaders believe that both Mr Sonko and Mr Thangw ’ a are infelicitous to dispute or hold a public office, having been impeached and the same indictment having been not capsized by court.
The base of their case is article 75( 3) of the Constitution, which bars a person removed from office from ever holding any other state office.
Mr Sonko was impeached from the office of the governor on December 17, 2020. The Senate, while passing the resolution to remove him from office, set up him shamefaced of pillaging public coffers, persistently bogarting and molesting officers of the County Executive Committee and unlawfully using public finances to pay for his son’s trip to New York, USA.
Social media posts
He was also set up shamefaced of persistently and wilfully using, publicising and publishing vituperative and unsuitable words and language as substantiated by his social media posts. Further, he made multitudinous harangues in which he hailed abuses and conducted himself in a manner that undermines and demeans the office of the governor.
Mr Thangw ’ a was impeached by the Kiambu County Assembly in October 29, 2019, over contended gross misconduct, incapacity and abuse of office during the term of former governor Ferdinand Waititu. He was the county government’s minister for Youth Affairs and Sports.
The other three cases involve the general interpretation of Chapter Six of the Constitution on leadership and integrity.
Mr Asitiba wants court to declare that campaigners with undetermined court cases involving profitable crimes, abuse of office and capital offences shouldn’t dispute for public services until they’ve been cleared of the charges.
“ The presumption of innocence notwithstanding, the petitioner argues that allowing similar applicants to run for office is to risk having loose officers with alloyed records hold public/ state services and the ineluctable consequence is increased sacking, ” he says in the court papers.
Ethics and law of conduct
The solicitation comes a month after the electoral agency said it can not bar persons with integrity questions from querying for optional seats, as it criticized the courts for hindering its accreditation to apply ethics and the law of conduct in the choices process.
The commission also holds that the reports submitted to it by the anti-corruption watchdog on the integrity of each election seeker aren’t conclusive in determining the felicity of a seeker to vie unless backed by an order from a court or aquasi-judicial body.
Mr Asitiba says that uninterrupted failure by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission to apply indigenous vittles on leadership and integrity has kept unfit persons in state services to the detriment of Kenyans.
This, he says, has eroded public confidence and trust in the electoral process and the statutory bodies commanded to cover the interest of citizens.
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