Deputy President William Ruto has today August 26, 2022 filed his response to Raila Odinga’s presidential petition ahead of Supreme court showdown.
At the same time, Ruto unveiled a team of 54 attorneys to counter his political nemesis Raila’s team of 42 lawyers.
Ruto’s lawyer will be under the leadership of Senior Counsel Fred Ngatia, lawyer Kithure Kindiki, and Gladys Shollei.
“The first common feature that underlies Odinga’s thirty-year pattern of strikingly similar acts after every presidential election is disingenuous disputation of presidential election results as a means of forcing the winner to share power through unconventional and extra-constitutional government arrangements popularly known as handshake,” an affidavit by Ruto read.
Ruto’s 53-person legal team is being lead by Senior Counsel Fred Ngatia in the Supreme Court to defend his victory on August 9 in the election.
As the senior counsel in charge, Ngatia will be supported by senior counsels Kiragu Kimani and Kioko Kilukumi, both of whom have represented Ruto for many years.
The 24 lawyers include Kithure Kindiki, Katwa Kigen, Linda Musumba, Muthomi Thiankolu, and Kivutha Kibwana, are mentioned as Ruto’s advocates on official records.
26 legal researchers are also working with Ruto, including Gladys Shollei, Winrose Njuguna, Adrian Kimotho, Duncan Ojwang, and Korir Sing’oei.
Four IT experts, Raymond Bett, Edmond Kiprotich, Geoffrey Rono, and Geoffrey Koech, are also members of the Ruto team. On the list is also statistician Duncan Kichamu.
The petition comes in response to one filed by Odinga last week, which contested Ruto’s victory on the grounds that the electoral body rigged the vote in the Deputy President’s favour.
Ruto, however, has refuted the assertion, stating that Raila is well known for contesting all presidential election results in an effort to force a handshake that leads to a coalition government.
He cited an agreement signed in 2012 with the later Mwai Kibaki and a handshake with Uhuru Kenyatta, the outgoing president in 2017 after the latter supported Raila in the August polls.
Nine petitions have been submitted in total to contest the election results. All the nine petitions contesting the election’s results mention Ruto, who ran for president on the UDA ticket.
Ruto was declared the president-elect of the August 9 presidential election by Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC)’s chairman Wafula Chebukati.
Raila Odinga filed a lawsuit challenging the result and put out a team of 42 barristers to reverse the decision. The Azimio leadership accuse Chebukati with claiming to independently tally and verify the results in their 72-page petition, which resulted in the declaration of the final result.