Nakuru law courts entrance. [Photo: the-star.co.ke]
A Nakuru court on Thursday heard that Nakuru West MP and sub-county administrator bribed voters during the August 8 Parliamentary election.
An ODM agent, Hesbon Musyori, who was testifying before Justice Mumbi Ngugi said that he saw Jubilee legislator Samuel Arama gave out money to voters who were heading to polling centres.
"I saw Arama and our county administrator dishing out money to voters who were on their way to the polling centers, some of the voters started wrangling for cash shortly after Arama left," said Musyori.
The witness said he was a chief agent in charge of 14 centers within the constituency.
The court also heard from another agent Rositika Oketch that she did not sign the form 34A but instead the form was signed by one Kennedy Otieno who was not an agent to the petitioner.
"The person who signed the form was not an agent to our party, he signed it because we were forcefully evicted from the centre during the counting exercise," said Oketch
Oketch also also claimed that some of the voters were not identified by the biometric machine but they later voted manually.
The petition to challenge Arama’s victory was filed by Isoke Ochoki, an ODM candidate who contested the August 8 polls.
The petitioner said the electoral process was marred with irregularities and inconsistencies in favor of his competitor Samuel Arama of Jubilee party.
Ochoki is now seeking court orders to scrutiny and recount of votes cast in Nakuru Town West and the court to declare him the winner if he is found to have secured more votes.
However, the court declined to issue an order for scrutiny and audit of the KIEMS kits, the servers and portal/websites citing no sufficient evidence availed before court.
Justice Maureen Odero directed that the scrutiny of the forms shall only be limited to the polling stations where the results were disputed.
Arama garnered 29,682 votes against Ochoki’s 25,071votes.