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Mariga to know his fate in Kibra by-election today

By Justus Ochieng' September 16th, 2019 2 min read

Football star McDonald Mariga will today know whether or not he will fly the Jubilee Party flag in the Kibra parliamentary by-election even as fresh petition against his bid is headed to the courts.

The electoral commissions’s dispute resolution committee is today expected to rule on his case, but his fate could still hang in the balance following the new dispute that has now shifted focus to the documentation he presented for clearance.

FRESH PETITION

Nation has also established that the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) also obtained details in the fresh petition by Kibra voter Leinah Konchella for scrutiny on whether the concerns raised therein are valid or not.

On Friday, Mr Konchella petitioned the IEBC’s dispute resolution committee to be enjoined as an interested party in the case against Mr Mariga, but the committee declined compelling him to move to court.

He is expected to file the petition in court today.

Mr Konchella, through Odindo and Company Advocates, avers that unless he is allowed to air his grievances, then he as a voter together with others in Kibra, will have been denied an opportunity to vote for a leader of “integrity, virtuous and one who meets the requirements of Chapter Six on leadership and integrity and further echoes the national values and ethos.”

The Kibra voter in his sworn affidavit argues that it is curious that Mr Mariga presented a national identity card indicating his date of birth as April 4, 1987, and further presented his KCSE certificate indicating that he sat his form four examination in 2002.

” … from the above it means that the complainant sat his secondary school examination at the age of 15, which is rather unusual and if the same is calculated backwards, it means that the complainant enrolled in class one for his primary school education at the age of three,” says Mr Konchella in his affidavit.

ABOVE BOARD

He further states that: “This can only lead one to conclude that the complainant was either a genius at primary school level, geniousness which abandoned him at secondary level for him to get a mean grade of D- (minus) or there are integrity issues as to the authenticity of the said documents he presented before the IEBC.”

In the petition, he attached copy of Mr Mariga’s ID and KCSE certificate, documents which Nation has established are also with the DCI.

Impeccable sources within the commission said Mr Mariga could be cleared by the IEBC today but “several issues still will remain hanging on his neck.”

The chairman of Jubilee’s National Elections Board (NEB), Mr Andrew Musangi, has however, maintained that their selection of Mr Mariga was above board.

“He is a person of impeccable character and credentials,” Mr Musangi said.

But as the DCI moves in, Nation learnt that the team is interested in establishing whether Mr Mariga uttered or may have provided false information to the registrar before securing his ID card.

“The question is whether giving such false information to the registrar is a criminal offence in our laws.