Former Impeached Governor, Mike Sonko has pledged support for UDA after Court Ruling halted his bid to vie in the upcoming Election.
Sonko has made it clear that he’s crossing over to back-up UDA candidate, Hassan Omar, for the Mombasa County Governor seat since his running mate Kisauni MP, Ali Mbogo, is not eligible to take part in the contest.
Sonko declared he would rather leave Kalonzo Musyoka’s Wiper party, a party within the Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Alliance coalition than throw his weight on ODM’s Abdulswamad Nassir, who he refers to as a ‘State project’.
Before Sonko’s name was thrown out of the ballot, he vetted for Mbogo to deputize him in the Mombasa gubernatorial race.
“I was cleared alongside my Deputy Governor Ali Mbogo. The impeachment was for Sonko not for Mbogo. We are pleading with IEBC and the government to clear Ali Mbogo to vie as governor,” Sonko said in an interview on Thursday.
“If they cannot clear Mbogo then I’m not going to support a puppet and a project instead we will back up Hassan Omar and UDA.” Sonko proclaimed.
Sonko’s attitude resulted from the High Court’s decision on Thursday, the court threw out a petition filed by Sonko that aimed to push the IEBC to shortlist him among the contenders for Mombasa Gubernatorial race.
The petition filed stood on conditions that Sonko still had an ongoing appeal case, concerning his 2020 impeachment while in the office of governor, at the East Africa Court of Justice, but the three-judge bench at the High Court endorsed a Supreme Court ruling over his ejection from office to be constitutional.
Before filing his petition with the East Africa court, the IEBC revoked Sonko’s nomination certificate on grounds that his impeachment from office was legal, this ruling successfully prohibited him from running for the Mombasa Governor seat.
IEBC states that a person may be eliminated from running for office if they are guilty of abuse of office according to Chapter Six of the Kenyan constitutional law.
