Zimbabwe's MDC Alliance has hired a Maseno University statistician to help with its petition challenging Emmerson Mnangagwa's election.
Edgar Otumba Ouko was NASA's expert statistician in the August 2017 petition against Uhuru Kenyatta's election which the Supreme Court nullified.
The MDC, according to Zimbabwe's Sunday Mail, is expected to show alleged irregularities in the case by Nelson Chamisa against Mnangagwa.
The applied statistics professor is expected to justify the party's claims that the July 31 poll was rigged in favour of the incumbent.
Mnangagwa was declared the winner with 50.8 per cent against Chamisa's 44.3 per cent of the total vote from 111 constituencies.
The Sunday Mail reports that Mnangagwa's lawyers have dismissed Otumba's expatriate in matters election.
The president's lawyers reportedly said the don's opinion should be treated as irrelevant and inadmissible.
"His documented research is on sugarcane and fish migration patterns."
"There are none on elections, aside from some consultancy work carried out in 2005 involving the election of a (Kenya) Sugar Board," the lawyers argued.
They cited errors in the affidavit which records the compromised votes at 305,784 and 345,784 in subsequent paragraphs.
In his affidavit, Otumba claims that overall prejudice to the opposition leader because of "voter intimidation, coercion, and manipulation".
The MDC Alliance has maintained that it won the poll accusing the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) of tampering with vote counting.
Chamisa wants Mnangagwa’s victory nullified and that the court declares him the winner.
But Mnangagwa insists that the opposition’s petition is premised on alleged mathematical anomalies which have no factual basis.
The petition will be heard on Wednesday, August 22.
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