BY SAM ALFAN.
City lawyer Apollo Mboya has challenged the appinyof Adams Oloo as a member of the IEBC selection panel.
Certifying the case as urgent, Justice Chacha Mwita directed the lawyer to serve the court papers on Prof Oloo, Attorney General and other parties named in the case, with the court documents.
Prof Oloo is a Strategy and Communications Advisor in the Office of the President.
Mboya filed has sought a conservatory order, suspending all proceedings of the IEBC selection panel.
The panel was picked by various parties and they were appointed through a Gazette Notice Number 715 Vol. CXXVII No.17 dated 27th January 2025.
Lawyer Mboya wants the court to restrain Prof Oloo from holding himself out as a member or discharging the functions of a member of the IEBC selection panel appointed by president William Ruto.
He pointed out that Prof Oloo was equally appointed as an advisor on 20th December 2024 by President Ruto as a Strategy and Communications Advisor in the Office of the President.
A few weeks later Prof Oloo was named a member of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), selection panel.
The team will recruit the commissioners and the chairperson of the electoral body within 90 days from the date they were sworn in.
According to lawyer Mboya, Oloo’s position in the panel presents a brazen conflict of interest and is an affront to the principle of separation of powers and representation that was intended by the IEBC Act Cap 7C Laws of Kenya.
The court heard that Oloo cannot faithfully, impartially and in good conscience be an independent representative of the Parliamentary Service Commission (which is by law supposed to be a people’s watchdog) and an independent advisor to the presidency or executive at the same time.
“If that was constitutionally permissible, the need to provide for sectoral representation as contemplated under the First Schedule to the Act would have been pointless. As it were, the presidency or executive may as well then appoint ALL members of the selection panel,” said.
“It is inimical to the values of Article 10 of the constitution and the enabling provisions of the IEBC Act that the Respondent can purport to be representative of the people on whose behalf he was appointed to Act while serving as an advisor to the president/ executive arm of government,” lawyer Mboya told the court.
He added that it is trite that an election is a process, beginning with the appointment of the electoral commissioners to the announcement of results. With political drumbeats already on crescendo, the commissioners appointed from this process will be blotted before they assume office.
“Needless to state, the endemic suspicions and mistrust that have pervaded Kenya’s electoral process will be revive,” added the lawyer.
Lawyer Mboya told the court that the optical and legal impact of this brazen violation of the integrity of the selection process defeats the objectives of the IEBC Act to wit; representation of the people in the selection of IEBC commissioners.
“The members of the panel have since been sworn into office by the Chief Justice and have vide a newspaper publication and Gazette Notice Number 1177 dated 3 ^ (rd) February 2025 carried in Vol. CXXVII-No. 21 respectively Invited applications from the public for the positions of IEBC commissioners,” Mboya told the court.
