MP: Nasa had heaps of irrelevant evidence against Uhuru hours to petition deadline
Rarieda MP Otiende Amollo has disclosed how opposition coalition Nasa almost lost their petition against the August 8, 2017 presidential election.
The lawyer,, who was the face of Nasa’s petition, revealed that the Raila Odinga -led coalition had no reliable evidence to sustain their case three days before deadline for filing the petition at the Supreme Court.
According to Mr Amollo, he was initially reluctant to take up the case since he was approached three days to the deadline, bearing in mind the magnitude of such a petition.
MOUNTAINS OF EVIDENCE
“When I was brought in I said this is such a short time, do you have the evidence? I was assured that we had mountains of evidence so I was taken to see the mountains of evidence,” he said.
During that period, Nasa leadership consisting of Mr Odinga and his co-principals Kalonzo Musyoka (Wiper), Musalia Mudavadi (Amani National Congress) and Moses Wetang’ula (Ford Kenya) had assured their supporters that there was sufficient evidence to prove that the elections were rigged in favour of President Uhuru Kenyatta.
Their assurances were based on claims that Nasa had several parallel tallying centres within and outside the country including one “in the clouds” as Mr Odinga had put it.
“I walked into this room with a group of about 70 young, good people and I have never seen so much evidence in my life. There were piles and piles of files but when I sat down to be briefed on the evidence, I had never seen so much irrelevant evidence,” said Mr Amolo.
He explained that the team had been working for a whole week but whatever they had done had to be reviewed.
‘LITTLE SLEEP’
“They had been working for seven days but what they had been working on was irrelevant for an advocate quite honestly, so we had to start again and I have never spent so much time with little sleep in three days but well, we did it,” he said.
The legislator was speaking at the Intercontinental Hotel in Nairobi on Monday, during a book launch graced by Uganda’s opposition leader Kizza Besigye.
The Supreme Court led by Chief Justice David Maraga found the August 8 presidential election to have been marred with illegalities and irregularities.
The court ordered for a fresh presidential elections which were subsequently boycotted by the opposition who cited doubts on the electoral commission’s ability to organize a credible election without making structural and personnel changes.