High Court dismissed a petition filed by the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) party seeking an extra Ksh115 million payout from the Registrar of Political Parties.
In court documents obtained by Kenyans.co.ke, High Court Justice Aleem Visram faulted the ruling party for not providing evidence to substantiate its version of the number of votes garnered during the August 2022 General Election.
Further, the judge sided with the Registrar of Political Parties, which relied on the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) figures in allocating the funds to the parties.
"I begin my evaluation with the presumption that the numbers provided by the IEBC and applied by the Registrar to the formula (set out in Section 25 of the Act) were, in fact, correct. I then ask whether the Appellant discharged its burden of proving otherwise.
"Applying my mind to the test above and based on the evidence on the record, I do not think the test has been met. I state this because beyond 'submitting' that the appellant (UDA party) did not agree with the numbers provided by the IEBC, it did not provide any evidence of what the correct numbers ought to be, nor did it provide any evidence as to why, or how, the IEBC numbers were wrong," the judge directed.
In its petition, UDA claimed it garnered 31 million out of the 68 million votes cast in the August 2022 General Election. Through the figures, the party sought to be granted an extra Ksh115 million from the Ksh1.48 billion set to be distributed to 48 political parties across the country.
The ruling party faulted the formula used by the Registrar of Political Party Ann Nderitu in allocating the funds arguing that the Azimio coalition among others, had eaten into its share.
UDA argued that some of the votes incorporated in the formula were of parties that did not secure any elective seat.
From the Registrar's formula, UDA got the lion's share of Ksh577 million, followed by the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), which got Ksh308 million. This left a balance of Ksh595 million to be shared among 46 political parties.
Jubilee party, which initially pocketed more than Ksh500 million every financial year, was allocated Ksh135 million.
Wiper Party will get Ksh72 million, while former Defence CS Eugene Wamalwa's Democratic Action Party was granted Ksh31 million.
The Political Parties Act 2011 dictates that the Registrar of Political Parties set aside 0.3 per cent of the national government's revenue to finance political outfits in Kenya.
Clause 25 of the Act stipulates that 95 per cent of the Fund is proportionate to the total number of votes secured by each political party in the preceding General Election. The remaining five per cent goes to administration expenses.
Further, a political party shall not be entitled to receive the funds if it does not secure at least five per cent of the votes in the election or if more than two-thirds of its registered office bearers are of the same gender.
