Taita Taveta: IEBC verify petition to dissolve county

Seven days
after president Uhuru submitted a petition seeking the dissolution of Taita
Taveta County to the Independent electoral and Boundaries Commission, the electoral
body has released its statutory threshold report.

In a press
release send to news room, IEBC confirmed that the petition was supported by
21,861 registered voters from Taita Taveta County.

“On October
30 2019, the Office of the President delivered to the commission seventeen (17)
booklets with a request to verify whether the petition met the requirement of
section 123 (2) of the County Government Act No. 17 of 2012…We have therefore
completed the exercise and we notify the public that the petition has met the requisite
statutory threshold,” read the statement in part.

For the
petition to move to the next level, it requires at least 15,500 signatures from
registered voters based in the said county.

Taita Taveta
County has 155,000 registered voters according to IEBC, and with the law
requiring signatures from at least 10 percent (15,500 signatures) of the total
voters, the petition will to dissolve it will go next level.

Therefore president
Uhuru will, within 14 days, submit a report on grounds to suspend the county to
the apex intergovernmental body.

This comes
barely four month after Taita Taveta Governor Granton Samboja signed another
petition intending to have the county dissolved over budget row with Members of
the County Assembly.

Samboja accused
MCAs of sabotaging his administration through huge allocations of money to Ward
Development kitty.

In response,
the MCAs went ahead to move a motion of impeachment against the governor, who
later survived the impeachment after the senate nullified it, after founding
none of the allegations substantive.

The Senate
Committee investigating Members of County Assembly move to impeach the governor
on October 9 recommended that the seven allegations leveled against the
governor be probed by EACC.