Court gives Raila Odinga 14 days to file submissions in Ann Waiguru defamation case

National Super Alliance presidential candidate Raila Odinga. (Photo: Denish Ochieng/ Standard)

The High Court has ordered NASA presidential flag bearer Raila Odinga to file submissions within 14 days in support of his application seeking certain lifestyle information from former Devolution Cabinet Secretary Ann Waiguru who filed defamation case against him. 

High Court Judge Joseph Sergon Thursday issued the orders noting that if he will not have complied, the case will continue without his application being heard.

“We will continue with the case if the submissions will not have been filed,” the judge said.

At the same time Waiguru has told the court that she cannot disclose her earnings to Raila.

While asking the court to dismiss the application by Raila, Waiguru said that the questions he had asked her to respond to had an ulterior motive of indirectly auditing her lifestyle and delaying the case.

"The defendant having defamed the plaintiff in the absence of any factual matrix now seeks through interrogatories to shift the burden of proof through a fishing expedition," reads a reply filed before High Court Judge Joseph Sergon.

Waiguru argued that "the interrogatories do not relate to any of the matters in question between the parties."

Waiguru says that if the Opposition leader wants to know what she used to earn as a civil servant and as a C abinet Secretary, he should query Salaries and Remuneration Commission, something she said can be easily found.

She said that it's a ploy to have the case lie in court without being heard.

Raila moved to court saying that the case she had filed should be dismissed as she had refused to reply to his written questions on the basic salary she earned between 2006 and 2015.

The Opposition leader argued that the only way he would be able to reply to the case by the Kirinyaga governor aspirant was to have her answer his questions.

In his questions, Raila had asked Waiguru to respond to among others her salary, allowances, list of properties she owned and their worth, the list of dependents and how much she spent on them.

But she argued that the information being sought was malicious and was unnecessarily targeting her children despite them not being party to the suit.