NASA presidential candidate Raila Odinga. [Photo/ buzzkenya.com]
As the Court of Appeal was making a ruling on the National Super Alliance's (NASA) case against the IEBC on ballot printing tender, Raila Odinga held a poorly attended press conference and made another round of baseless, but wild, claims about the August 8 polls. Mr Odinga, the NASA presidential flag-bearer, alleged that some 42 security officers in the police service and military were being prepared to be among IEBC election officials, serving as presiding officers, polling clerks and party agents.Although people are getting used to the ODM boss making unsubstantiated allegations, it is quite a surprise that he spends so much time imagining all manner of bad things happening on polling day, at a time he should be persuading Kenyans to vote for him. His motives are now pretty clear when you look at the timing of the press conference. Raila knew that his team had lost the case against IEBC, in which they accused President Uhuru Kenyatta of helping Dubai firm Al Ghurair get the tender for printing ballot papers and supplying other election materials to the electoral commission. The Court of Appeal dismissed NASA’s claims of Mr Kenyatta’s alleged involvement as mere rumours. NASA lawyers had provided newspaper cuttings as evidence of the alleged meeting at State House. The other big case that the opposition lost was the bid to stop Al Ghurair from printing the presidential ballot papers. NASA had claimed that there was no public participation. The court gave the printing company the go-ahead to do their job, ending Raila’s hopes of crippling IEBC and thereby postponing the elections. Make no mistake: this was a painful loss for the opposition. And Raila wanted to dilute it by making wild allegations, which he expects to dominate the headlines. Everyone knows that IEBC recruits polling officials in an open manner — interviews have already been conducted countrywide — and the only role security officers play during the election period is to provide security so that wayward people do not take advantage to cause chaos to law-abiding citizens.