The newly appointed State House Comptroller Katoo ole Metito has withdrawn an election petition that he had filed at the Kajiado Law Courts and has asked his lawyers to substitute his name in the case.
While appearing before Justice Janet Mulwa, Senior Counsel Omwanza Ombati for Metito said their client was withdrawing from the case and was looking for a substitute.
“The petitioner, Katoo Ole Metito gave us instructions to withdraw his petition and substitute his name because he is now a State officer and cannot appear in court. These are the preliminaries we are dealing with in terms of bringing in a new petitioner and expunging the name of our client from the records,” said SC Omwanza.
On whether the change of petitioner may weaken the case, Omwanza said that only a slight delay would be witnessed as the new petitioner has to be acquainted with the documents for him or her to own the case.
Omwanza revealed that as Katoo’s lawyers, they would make a formal application for withdrawal of the case in the next two days and serve the other parties by Monday next week.
They will then advertise in the newspaper that the case is coming up for hearing on Thursday and thereafter they will get directions about substitution and the new petitioner will be served with the petition before appearing for a pre-trial.
Omwanza remarked that one of the key agents for Katoo would take over as the substitute in the case.
Katoo ole Metito filed the election petition case against the incumbent governor Joseph ole Lenku on October 11, 2022.
He filed the petition on grounds of election illegalities citing that there was no transparency in the election process and mass rigging of votes took place.
In the hotly contested gubernatorial seat, Katoo ole Metito of the United Democratic Alliance polled 111,725 votes against Orange Democratic Movement’s Joseph ole Lenku who got 117,600. Jubilee party’s candidate David Nkedianye got 75,337 while Ambrose Ng’ang’a, an independent candidate garnered 2,661 votes.