Raila Odinga’s lead advocate James Orengo was forced to cut short IEBC lawyer Mahat Somane, who was addressing the issue of Jose Camargo’s name appearing in a form 34 A as presented earlier by Julie Soweto, who is also representing Raila.
Mahat, who was armed with the original copy of the form, explained to the court how Camargo’s name ended up in the form that was downloaded from IEBC portal.
“I want to inform the court that the name Jose Camargo in that form is an overlay. The register of the QR code that was printed by Smartmatic international and was printed in the name of Jose Camargo,” the lawyer said before Orengo interjected.
Orengo accused Mahat of giving evidence in court without a witness who could explain the information that he was giving and suggested that he should instead be a witness and be subjected to cross-examination.
“We were very patient the way Mr. Mahamat addressed the court earlier, very persuasive. But for good order and not to interfere with his submissions we kept quiet and if you look back at the record, a lot of what Mr. Mahat was saying was actually giving evidence, he was talking using the word we, the trajectory which he is taking without a witness to tell the kind of information he is going to give us is going to put the court into a difficult position.
“I think he should transform himself into a witness and we begin to cross examine him, because either we practice law the way we understand it or anybody can confront the court with any document at any time,” Orengo said.
The Senior Counsel further explained what Soweto’s presentation was about . According to him, Soweto was responding to a question from the judges and she explained how there was interference noting that the issue was not about the form but how it was manipulated.
IEBC lead lawyer Githu Muigai however objected Orengo’s protest noting that Soweto produced a document that was not in any of the affidavits supporting their petition while IEBC was producing documents in affidavits.
According to him, Orengo was trying to block the fact that there was a deliberate misrepresentation of what the original form 34A looked like.
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