ODM leader Raila Odinga has landed in unprecedented legal trouble after he failed to meet a critical election law.
Odinga failed to meet the December 9 deadline that required all 2017 candidates to open campaign bank accounts and submit a list of their Campaign Finance Management committees.
While conceding that the Opposition chief did not meet the deadline, CORD Secretariat Executive Director Norman Magaya stated that the failure to comply was not deliberate but was caused by anomalies in the provisions of the respective law.
“Our candidate, Raila Odinga, did not comply because that law was defective. We still do not have candidates. The law only requires candidates to make such submissions,” Magaya stated.
Odinga has since moved to court through lawyer Anthony Oluoch, arguing that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) did not have powers to publish the regulations before Parliament had approved them.
The penalty for violating the Elections Finance Act is a fine of Sh2 Million or a conviction of five years in jail or both.
Incidentally, the requirement was introduced by the joint select parliamentary committee whose members were drawn from CORD and Jubilee and was aimed at meeting demands made by Opposition politicians who had been calling for reforms at IEBC.
Odinga is the only major presidential aspirant who did not comply with the law.
President Uhuru Kenyatta, Wiper Leader Kalonzo Musyoka, ANC leader Musalia Mudavadi and his Ford Kenya counterpart Moses Wetangula have all complied with the law.
