Court rejects Munyes application for vote recount

The High Court in Lowdar has dismissed an application by John Munyes seeking a re-count and audit of votes cast in favour of Turkana Governor Josphat Nanok.

Presiding Judge Stephen Riech disallowed the application on grounds that the request was made after parties had closed the hearing of the petition filed by Munyes, who was last Friday nominated as Cabinet Secretary for Petroleum and Mining.

The judge said that all evidence from the parties were tendered and closed on December 5, 2017.

Justice Riech maintained that the petitioner ought to have made the application for a recount during the pre-trial stage of the petition.

The court consequently upheld the submissions made by Governor Nanok’s lawyer, Philip Nyachoti that the application for scrutiny and tallying of votes was made in bad faith.

The  court said the order for scrunity ought to have been included in the main petition, to allow the court to direct for preservation of election materials.

The Governor’s defense had informed the court that the petitioner, from his original petition, had indicated he was not  interested in  knowing the number of votes cast in the Turkana gubernatorial election.

“The petitioner had only sought the court to make a determination over election process, violence, bribery and misuse of  government resources by the  governor,” the  court heard.

He told the court that, the allegations were not proved by the petitioner’s witnesses and agents, saying that he was only interested on  three polling stations.

The application for scrunity was also opposed by the IEBC and its Returning Officer, George Oyugi, on similar grounds that the petitioner had brought new materials which were  not contained in his petition.

During the August election, Munyes and Nanok were the only two candidates for in the Turkana gubernatorial race.

Nanok was declared the winner after garnering 73,913 votes while Munyes got 53,306.

The hearing of the petition commenced on  November 30, 2017 and the petitioner called all witnesses and closed his case on 4 December 2107.