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Kenya: Garsen Poll Case Rushed, Says MP
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The Nation (Nairobi)
3 July 2008
Posted to the web 3 July 2008
Eunice Machuhi
Nairobi
An MP has asked that an election petition filed against him be struck out for lack of personal service.
Garsen MP Danson Mungatana also says that the petition documents were presented to his lawyers out of the required time stipulated by law.
The MP, through lawyer Cecil Miller, told Mr Justice Leonard Njagi on Wednesday that the parliamentary results were published on December 30, 2007, and poll loser Hussein Dado filed the petition on January 22, 2008.
Presentation of the petition ought to have been on January 27, 2008, a Sunday, and so the time was extended to January 28, 2008, but by then service had not been effected.
Mr Miller said his client became aware of the petition when it was advertised in the papers. And even after filing a notice of acceptance, the petitioner served his legal firm out of time. He said the petitioner's process server, Mr Thomas Nduku, left the documents at the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs where his client worked as an assistant minister before the elections last year.
"At this time Cabinet had not been re-appointed and so the MP's term of office ended when elections were held," Mr Miller said.
The court had been told that Mr Nduku looked for the MP at the Narc- K offices, his home at Kilimani, Safari Park Hotel, where MPs were allegedly meeting, and at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre.
Heavy security
Mr Miller said the MP's home is not in Kilimani but in Riverside Drive and the seminar at Safari Park was for newly elected MPs.
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Mr Nduku had alleged that his efforts to serve the MP at KICC were thwarted by heavy security around him. Mr Miller said the petition being filed four days to the expiry of the stipulated period explained why Mr Nduku's attempts were rushed, botched, non-existent and full of lies.
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