High Court Upholds Election of Anyang' Nyong'o as Kisumu Governor

The High Court in Kisumu on Wednesday morning upheld the election of Professor Anyang' Nyong'o as Kisumu Governor in the August 8th election.

The court dismissed the petition where former Kisumu Governor Jack Ranguma was seeking nullification of the election of Nyong'o and slapped him with a Sh5 million bill.

In his judgement, Justice David Majanja refused to grant Ranguma most of his prayers including claims of vote stuffing and failure to include five polling stations.

“The substantial issue that arose, though not pleaded, related to the collation and tally of results from the 5 polling stations which were omitted from Form 37B for Kisumu East Constituency and Form 37C,” he stated.

“These were Mamboleo Market (No. 3), Koyango Market (No. 3), Nyalenda ‘A’ Community Hall (No. 4) and Nyalenda ‘A’ Community Hall (No. 5) and Akado Polytechnic (No. 2) all in Kisumu East Constituency.”

The judge ruled that the five stations would not have any impact on the final outcome of the election.

“At the end of the day, the failure to record the results of the 5 polling stations within Kisumu East Constituency on Form 37B and Form 37C would not in any way affect the results as the petitioner was the winner of the election even assuming that the petitioner would have garnered all the votes in those stations,” he said.

Ranguma had requested the Court to order for for audit, scrutiny, recount and re-tallying of the votes. However, judge Majanja ruled that his claims were broad as he failed to single out the specific polling stations where the errors and irregularities took place.

“At paragraph 28 of the petition, the petition averred that there was massive and deliberate failure of operational transparency in that the IEBC deliberately and intentionally disregarded the decision in the Maina Kiai Case (Supra) and that it failed to electronically collate, tally and transmit the results accurately in accordance with the court decision,” he declared.

“He further averred that the IEBC colluded with the 3rd respondent in ejecting the petitioner’s agents from various polling stations within the County. 46. I have already dealt with the issue of collating, tallying and transmitting the results in the context of the Maina Kiai Case (Supra). I once again emphasise that electronic transmission of the gubernatorial results was not a mandatory requirement under section 39 of the Act,” he said.

Consequently, the court awarded 1st respondent (IEBC) and 2nd respondent the (County Returning Officer) Sh2.5 million, while the 3rd respondent (Prof Anyang Nyong’o) was given Sh2.5 million.