NASA principals at a past rally [PHOTO/capitalfm.co.ke]
Bungoma Senator Moses Wetang’ula risks being sentenced to jail next if he fails to pay the Sh5.8 million election petition damages he owes former Cabinet Minister Musikari Kombo.
Bungoma High Court has given Wetangula until May 10 to pay all the cumulative amounts that arose from two decisions where he lost to Kombo.
Even after the order was issued on April 5 this year, the Bungoma senator has not honoured it to date.
Kombo was Wetangula’s key rival in the 2013 Bungoma Senator race.
He challenged the senator's victory at the High Court and won the case with costs.
Wetang’ula later appealed the decision and ended up losing again with costs.
According to the High Court decision, Justice F Gikonyo placed the upper limit of damages payable to Kombo at Sh4 million and the same amount was set by Court of Appeal judges F Azangalala, J Mohamed and David Maraga for the appeal costs.
When computations were calculated, High Court costs rose to Sh3.8 million as the Court of Appeal costs came to Sh1.7 million.
The total amount was to be made by Wetangu’la, IEBC and the electoral commission's returning officer Madahana Mbaya.
“Under the law, a judgment debtor can go for any of the parties once judgment is issued jointly and severally. They are equally liable and it’s up to them to agree how to share the costs,” says Kombo's lawyer as reported by Standard.
“In our case, I advised my client that we go for Wetang’ula because it’s always easier to execute against an individual as opposed to an institution,” lawyer Alfred Ndambiri told the Sunday Standard.
Ndambiri says that since 2014, his client has not been able to extract the costs from the senator.
He adds that they even went to the extent of instructing auctioneers to attach Wetang’ula’s but still this did not help.