Political Parties Tribunal throws out Wanjigi’s petition challenging legality of ODM’s NDC meeting

The Political Parties Tribunal has given a green light to the ODM National Delegates Conference, planned for Friday and Saturday, after throwing out an application by a group, associated with businessman Jimi Wanjigi, that was challenging its legality.

In a unanimous decision, the tribunal threw out the suit for lack of merit saying that petitioners led by John Mworia Nchebere did not table evidence showing that they had exhausted all the Alternative Dispute Resolution before they sought for the tribunal’s intervention to address the issues at the party.

“In our view, we find that the matter by the complainants before our jurisdiction was prematurely invoked. The preliminary objection by the ODM Party is merited and upheld. The application by the petitioners is struck out,” ruled the tribunal vice-chair Wilfred Mutubwa who read the ruling on behalf of the bench.

Nchebere and other party members were faulted for rushing to the Political Parties Dispute Tribunal forum without giving ODM enough time to address the issues in the letter dated February 9, 2022, through Alternative Dispute Resolution mechanisms.

The tribunal noted that ODM was served with the letter on February 17 and barely 24 hours later the petitioned moved to the Tribunal thereby denying the party an opportunity to read the letter and internalize their concerns.

The petitioners had moved to the tribunal seeking to block the top party’s organ meeting of February 25 and 26 claiming 1230 bonafide delegates were not invited.

The petitioners, through lawyer Willis Otieno, accused the party of failing to include the nomination of the flag bearer as one of the agendas to be discussed during the meeting.