Busia Senator Okiya Omtatah has sworn to challenge the passage of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries (IEBC) Act of 2023 in court saying due process was not followed when it was passed by the Senate.
The Senator wants the ongoing reconstitution of IEBC halted stating that amendments to the repealed IEBC Act 2012 should be done afresh.
Omtatah said the report was not approved by the house after the Senate Justice and Legal Affairs Committee formulated it.
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“I will be heading to court next week to challenge the amendments to the IEBC act which have brought a lot of noise in the country. After the bill was tabled in the Senate it became the property of the house and it ought to have been debated and either defeated or approved,” the lawmaker said.
Omtatah further argued that the ongoing process of hiring IEBC commissioners is unlawful.
“No standing orders allow that and therefore that bill was passed without debate and hence invalid. Even the appointment President Ruto is about to make has no basis in the law,” the Senator said.
Omtatah also poked holes in the legality of the selection panel as envisaged in the IEBC Act 2023 saying only the Parliamentary Service Commission followed the law in recruiting representatives to sit in the panel.
He mentioned that only PSC shortlisted and interviewed candidates to sit in the selection panel while the rest embarked on a boardroom process to choose the candidates for the panel.
The other representatives are from the Public Service Commission, the Parliamentary Service Commission, the Political Parties Liaison Committee, the Law Society of Kenya, and the Inter-Religious Council of Kenya.