Activist Okiya Omtatah today moved to court seeking an order to suspend the on-going elections in the Kenyan Parliament for members of the East African Legislative Assembly.
Omtatah wants the court to restrain Parliament from proceeding to conduct elections in the Kenyan Parliament for Members of the East African Legislative Assembly pending the hearing and determination of his suit.
Under a certificate of urgency, Omtatah moved to court claiming that under EALA rules, candidates may be nominated by political Parties or may vie as independents.
However, he claims that the ongoing elections are irregular as the Joint Parliamentary Select Committee allocated five slots to the Jubilee party, and four slots to ODM, Wiper Party and Ford-Kenya which is former CORD coalition and thereby not reserving slots for independent candidates.
According to him, the Committee’s report recognizes that the rules governing the election of independent candidates were inadequate for that purpose.
In that regard, he wants the court to quash the nomination process based on the erroneous rules and order new nominations based on constitutionally valid rules to be conducted before June 4, 2017.