The High court has dismissed petitions seeking to bar former Nairobi governor Mike Sonko from contesting the August 9 polls.
A three-judge bench said that it has no jurisdiction to determine the case on integrity issues on Sonko, Kiambu Senate aspirant Karungo Thang’wa and Nakuru Town West MP Samuel Arama.
According to the justices David Majanja, Chacha Mwita, and Mugure Thande, all mechanisms before the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) must be exhausted.
“Jurisdiction of this court should not be invoked until the mechanisms before the IEBC are exhausted. We decline jurisdiction on those cases,” they said.
However, IEBC Lawyer Edwin Mukele told the judges that it has no jurisdiction to deal with issues around the acceptance of Sonko’s candidature.
That power he said to solely lies with the commission’s disputes committee.
The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission had blacklisted 241 aspirants seeking elective posts in the August 9 elections as having integrity issues related to corruption and economic crime.
The list was forwarded to IEBC for guidance on whether they ought to vie in the elections for failing to meet the Chapter 6 requirement on integrity.
“EACC considers these persons to have fallen short of the moral and ethical standards stipulated for election to public office. EACC hopes that IEBC will make appropriate decisions guided by constitutional values and public interest,” the ethics commission said in a statement.
The listed persons were verified from a pool of 21,863 persons seeking registration as Presidential, Gubernatorial, Senate, Member of Parliament and Member of County Assembly candidates.