CCC approaches Supreme Court over double candidates

CITIZENS Coalition for Change (CCC) has approached the Supreme Court challenging the High Court's dismissal of its appeal challenging double candidates recorded under the party's name on nomination day.

The High Court Judge Justice Neville Wamambo ruled that the request to disqualify the 22 put forward by the party was invalid because the candidates were CCC members.

In an appeal filed at the Supreme Court, the party is now seeking to have the judgment set aside, arguing that Justice Wamambo had erred in his decision.

"Appellant having specifically disavowed second to twenty-second respondents as its candidates and the issue having been specifically raised before it, the court a quo erred in not deciding the question whether appellant needed to do more than simply disavow such respondents.

"The court a quo erred in not coming to the conclusion that where political parties are involved as sponsoring candidates, an obligation rests upon a nomination officer once cause has arisen, to require a candidate claiming to be sponsored by a political party to establish the fact… for the nomination officer to verify the matter with the political party concerned," reads part of the grounds of appeal.

CCC also argued that the High Court misdirected itself in not coming to the conclusion that the fact of the existence of double candidates, the symbol(s) presented by the second to twenty-second respondents as well as the signatures on their forms were so clearly at variance with the recorded intention of and the specimens given by appellant as to oblige a trigger of the exercise of a function under section 46(9) of the Electoral Act (Chapter 2.13).

"The court a quo erred at any rate in suggesting that the appeal placed before it may have been invalid on the basis of the moribund and inapplicable provisions of rule 10 of the Electoral Court (Applications, Appeals and Petitions) Rules, 1995."

The matter is yet to be heard.