- Ahmednasir, Hassan’s lawyer during the 2013 presidential election petition referred to Raila as a perennial loser who never accepted defeat.
- The remarks did not sit well with Raila.
Image: HANDOUT
Former IEBC chairman Issack Hassan has disclosed details of the day he had to apologise to Azimio Party leader Raila Odinga.
Hassan said Raila was not happy with remarks that had earlier been made by his lawyer, Senior Counsel Ahmednasir Abdullahi.
"He (Raila) was unhappy that my lawyer Senior Counsel Ahmednasir Abdullahi had called him a perennial loser who will never accept defeat but had to blame others for his loss," he explained.
He was speaking in an interview in Citizen on Thursday.
Ahmednasir, Hassan’s lawyer during the 2013 presidential election petition, in a sworn affidavit, referred to the ODM leader who was challenging the election of Uhuru Kenyatta as a perennial loser who never accepted defeat.
The remarks did not sit well with Raila then under the umbrella Cord – something the former electoral agency chairman now says never came from him.
“The effect of this statement refused to go away. I had the most difficult time trying to dissociate and distance myself from it. I could hardly convince anyone in Raila’s camp that I was not the source of this ideology,” Hassan said in his book, The Referee of Dirty Ugly Game – In the Theatre 0f Kenya’s Elections, an Insider's Account.
Hassan said he apologised to Raila when they met in Dubai, where he was coming from New York and the ODM leader was from Morocco.
To his surprise, the former IEBC boss said Raila accepted the apology.
"He (Raila) actually accepted it and told his politicians to bring up the issue again. Raila told them he had talked to me and now that's water under the bridge," Hassan added.
“The effect of this statement refused to go away. I had the most difficult time trying to dissociate and distance myself from it. I could hardly convince anyone in Raila’s camp that I was not the source of this ideology,” Hassan said.
As a peace token, Hassan bought cologne for the ODM leader and his wife, Ida Odinga, in the in-flight duty-free.
“I had hoped that we would bury the hatchet and it would allay some of the bile against me from him and the Cord team,” he says.