• Muhuri wanted the court to suspend the verification of signatures which started on December 10th.
• They want a legal framework to guide the processes developed and passed.
The IEBC, Speaker of the National Assembly and his Senate counterpart have four days to respond to a petition seeking to stop the verification of signatures exercise.
Mombasa resident judge Erick Ogola declined to issue conservatory orders suspending the exercise pending hearing and determination of the matter.
Ogola said such orders could not be granted until when the respondents have entered appearance and responded to the petition.
He said issues raised by the petition were constitutionally relevant which need to be heard.
“Despite being served with the petition, the respondents seem to have ignored or neglected the case. The court hereby compels them to enter an appearance within four days,” said Ogola.
The petition has been filed by Muhuri, a Mombasa based civil society group while the BBI secretariat has been listed as interested parties.
Muhuri through its lawyer Caroline Kituku wanted the court to issue orders temporarily suspending the verification of signatures which kicked off on December 10.
She further said the court could also suspend the certification of the exercise and forwarding the report to the BBI secretariat since the court is not aware of how far the verification has gone.
Kituku told the court not issuing the conservatory orders might cause the subject of the petition being overtaken by events if IEBC goes ahead and complete the exercise and further certify it.
She further urged the court not to allow the respondents to be represented by BBI’s lawyer.
She said IEBC and the other respondents need to appear and answer to the inquiries being raised in the petition.
However, the BBI national secretariat through its lawyer Paul Mwangi objected issuance of conservatory orders.
Mwangi said issues being raised in the petition have already been dealt with by a Nairobi High Court and which declined to issue any orders suspending the exercise.
He further said the exercise was not the first one to be handled by IEBC and the petition has never moved to court.
He said IEBC verified signatures during Okoa Kenya, Punguza Mzigo and now BBI but Muhuri never raised any queries on the exercise.
In the petition filed on December 31, Muhuri wants the exercised suspended until a legal framework to guide the verification and certification of the processes are developed and passed.
Muhuri says the IEBC seem to be proceeding with the verification of the signatures despite it admitting that they lack database of voters to be able to undertake the exercise.
The civil society is also challenging IEBC’s ability to satisfactorily legally and constitutionally undertake the exercise as there were no law, regulations or legal guidelines on how the actual verification should be done.
Muhuri said on December 15 they requested for information on whether IEBC held specimen signatures of all registered voters which were to be used in verifying the signatures.
They also inquired on whether the commission had set any rules or regulations to guide the verification of the signature process.
They had also sought to know funds have been allocated and authorized for the conduct of verification of signatures.
However, IEBC in a letter dated December 23 said they did not have a database of specimen signatures of the registered voters and only maintains biographic and biometrics data of voters.
Muhuri said even though IEBC promised to use administrative procedures to carry out its exercise, the said procedures were silent on the actual exercise of verifying the signatures.