THE High Court in Mombasa yesterday upheld the election of Hassan Joho as governor.
The ruling was made in a fully packed court with Mombasa Senator Hassan Omar, and MP Omar Mwinyi (Changamwe), Kisauni’s Rashid Bedzimba, Mvita's Abdulswamad Nassir and a host of other dignitaries forced to stand in the entire duration of the over two hour judgment.
A jubilant Joho said justice has been done.
“The court has given the people of Mombasa justice by upholding their will. I will continue serving my people with the vigor I started with,” said Joho.
His supporters celebrated the win with song and dance on the streets of Mombasa.
However, Joho has to fend off another filed a lawyer who has questioned the validity of his academic certificates.
The petitioner Suleiman Shahbal had challenged Joho's election on the grounds of numerous electoral irregularities including voter bribery, death threats, ballot stuffing and bias by IEBC’s partisanship during the campaign period.
Justice Fred Ochieng dismissed several of the grounds for lack of evidence.
Ochieng said the petitioner had alleged Joho’s brother Abubakar, had brandished a pistol in a polling station at Ziwa La Ng’ombe but failed to substantiate his allegations.
“It was implied by the petitioner that there were instances of intimidation during the election period. An instance is that Joho’s elder brother brandished a gun at Frere Town station to intimidate IEBC officials,” said Ochieng.
“But the alleged intimidation cannot be supported since the petitioner removed the witnesses touching on the incidence. It was incumbent for the petitioner to lead evidence to that allegation. He did not,” said Ochieng.
The court said Shahbal gave no evidence to the respondent to the destruction of his campaign bill boards.
One of Shahbal’s relatives a Dr Swaleh Shahbal had testified that his vehicle was blocked by suspected Joho supporters
which prompted him to shoot in the air to disperse them. He said this was intimidation..
In his petition, Shahbal had said Joho's agent had drawn a gun at Dar-ulum after a mob complained of his presence inside the polling station.
The court ruled that the incidence did not affect the voting as the elections were over. The judge said the third respondent whose vehicle was stoned by a mob was the aggrieved party in the incident.
Ochieng said a scrutiny of 200 polling stations did not produce evidence of ballot stuffing by Joho's agents in collusion with the IEBC officials as Shahbal had claimed.
The judge ruled that the results of the scrutiny showed a very minimal variation in the results announced by IEBC as Shahbal added only 13 votes to his earlier tally of 94,905.