Footballer MacDonald Mariga, on Wednesday, challenged the decision of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission to block his candidature for the Kibra parliamentary seat in the upcoming by-election on the basis of not being a registered voter as required by the law.
In an affidavit he filed before the IEBC Dispute Resolution Committee, Mariga stated, “I registered as a voter on August 26, 2019, at Kariokor Social Hall Polling Station in Starehe Constituency and I was issued with an acknowledgement slip.”
He termed the decision by the Commission to block him from vying as “improper, null and void” and wants it revoked.
He argued that he was a registered voter based solely on the acknowledgement slip that he presented to the resolution committee.
His details, however, do not exist either in the manual register or in the IEBC Electronic Voter Identification System.
Mariga is blaming the Chebukati-led Commission for failing to update the voter register to have his name captured.
The details contained in the affidavit reveals that Mariga registered as a voter exactly a month after the late Kibra MP Ken Okoth died at Nairobi Hospital after a long battle with cancer.
Okoth succumbed to the killer disease on July 26.
Apart from issues regarding his registration as a voter, Mariga also has to deal with the concerns that he is an outsider and therefore, not the right candidate to fill Okoth’s shoes.
In an appeal that has since been withdrawn, one of the Jubilee aspirant for the seat, Moses Peter Kinyajui, lamented, “Mariga is not a resident or a voter of Kibra constituency and there are serious doubts whether or not he has ever voted.”
Kinyajui added, “His candidature will be an impossible sell to the people of Kibra given the calibre of MP we had in the immediate past.”