In what has now turned into a game of political wits, President Uhuru Kenyatta led Jubilee Party is holding its last wit card in ensuring Thursday’s repeat polls take place.
The last card on the table for Jubilee now lies with the President and it involves him not signing the new Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2017 passed by Parliament a fortnight ago, cites the Star.
Sources indicate he may not sign the bill. He could send it back to Parliament with proposed amendments.
As it is, the Bill requires IEBC Chair to be a person with an advanced law degree and qualified to be a Judge of the Supreme Court.
And with rifts rocking the commission, fears of Chebukati resigning ahead of the repeat polls are rife.
And Jubilee’s plan is to have Uhuru return the bill to Parliament with a proposal that the Chairman need not be a lawyer.
This means the commissioners as long as they have a quorum of three and above, could pick one of their own who declares Uhuru the winner of the repeat polls.
MPs will be called from recess to approve the President’s memo which requires two-thirds of the lawmakers to shoot it down.
A jubilee strategist intimated that they are not leaving anything to chance.
“We are not leaving anything to chance, we want to ensure Kenyans go to the election as per Supreme Court ruling. If it means returning to Parliament before the election, that’s what we’ll do,” said he.
“We have been watching things unfold, ensuring we’re not caught flat-footed or have people go to court early enough to challenge the law,” added another Jubilee honcho.
The opposition has vehemently opposed the bill.
Led by Raila Odinga, they say the bill’s aim is to take back the country to the “old days”.
But Jubilee MPs put a brave face in defending merits of the bills and went ahead to debate and pass it without their counterparts from NASA.
The bill gives more weight to manually transmitted results in case there are discrepancies in the electronically transmitted results.
The IEBC Chair who is the national returning officer for the presidential poll can use result forms to declare the winner.
Constituency Returning Officers have a daunting task of verifying results on Forms 34A before recording the information on Forms 34B to eliminate the possibility of discrepancies on the result forms.