NAIROBI, Kenya, Sept, 5 – Senior Counsel James Orengo, who represented Azimio La Umoja-One Kenya Alliance presidential Candidate Raila Odinga at the Supreme Court of Kenya where they were seeking the nullification of the presidential election results that saw United Democratic Alliance (UDA) candidate William Ruto declared president has accepted the verdict of the court.
Orengo outside the courtroom said that they accept the verdict, but they do not agree with it.
“I want to say without a fear of contradiction, we do not agree with the decision of the Supreme Court but like Al Gore, I would say we accept the decision but we do not agree with it,” he said further saying, “I say this like a seasoned practitioner that Courts sometimes makes mistakes which hare to be corrected over time, the court makes political decisions,”
Orange termed the verdict as ideological in nature since some of the issues they raised in court were easily dismissed.
“Yes in accordance with the law we have to accept this decision, but I think it is a very ideological decision, I think there is a lot said in the judgment and we will have time when the other judgment comes out to put out a critique but all it means is that in our jurisprudence, the petitioners will always have a big burden to carry when you have an electoral commission which id not open and transparent,”
He further faulted the electoral body, IEBC for not granting the petitioners full access to the servers, saying their claims of interference by foreigners were legitimate.
“The best way for this court to have made a decision was for the servers to be fully opened and all the election materials be placed before the court as would happen in a case where justice is to be rendered,”
“We wanted a comprehensive audit of not only the technology that was applied but a proper audit, although time was of the essence, though I believe we had sufficient time to carry out a proper audit including looking at the issues of the foreign intruders, the Venezuelans which you noticed the court avoid din making any comment about those intrusions and invasions of the system that technology, IT structure that which the court did not refer to but probably in the judgment in the 21, September, they will say something about it,” said Orengo.
On whether their legal team was fully prepared Orengo said,”, we were very well prepared compared to 2017,”
Lawyer Philip Murgor also expressed dissatisfaction with the court ruling saying, it was shocking that they lost on all nine points the court was ruling on.
“Just on the idea that we lost on all nine points, we find it incredible that that could be the holding of the court. In more of several of those cases, we had overwhelming evidence senior counsel Orengo said, the servers were not opened,”
We are perhaps a little bit stressed on the over-reliance on a registrar’s reports that has no input from us. That report was completely silent on the failure to open the servers. The servers have all the answers. The exact roles, we provided evidence that the Venezuelans were downloading documents, generating documents, none of that was touched on, but we hope they will address all this in the final judgment,” said Murgor.
On the role of Venezuelans, Murgor maintained that they interfered with the country’s elections.
“That gentleman, Jose Camargo’s name was not supposed to be on Form 34A, if at all he was involved in this election, he was involved in the technology side, so to find him anywhere near a Form 34 A raises more questions than answers,”
“I found it odd for Supreme court to describe lawyer Julie Soweto’s presentation as hot air as very disturbing,” said Orengo.
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