Ruto’s Election Valid, Kenya’s Supreme Court


Post created on 3:07 pm

 

 

Kenya’s Supreme Court has upheld the election result of Williams Ruto as valid.

This decision was announced on Monday by the chief justice of Kenya’s Supreme Court, Martha Koome.

Ruto, Kenya’s deputy president, was declared the winner of the country’s election after raking in 50.49 percent of the votes to defeat ex-Prime Minister Raila Odinga, his closest rival, who polled 48.85 percent.

But Odinga alleged irregularities in the election and said Ruto’s narrow win was the product of massive fraud.

He also alleged that a team working for Ruto hacked into the commission’s system and replaced genuine pictures of polling station result forms with fake ones.

Also, four out of seven election commissioners of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) of Kenya disowned the result announced by Wafula Chebukati, its chairman, saying the tallying of results had been “opaque” as the chairman unilaterally carrying out the vote tally and declaring the result.

They, therefore, said the election should be nullified.

Reading out the court’s verdict on Monday, Koome said the court is “not persuaded by the allegation that technology deployed by the IEBC failed the standard the test of integrity, verifiability, security, and transparency”.

On the issue that there was interference with the results uploaded to the electoral commission’s portal, the court said: “no credible evidence was presented to prove that anyone accessed the results transmission system to intercept, detain or tamper with the results before they were uploaded to the portal”.

Koome added that the argument that the integrity of the public portal was compromised was disproved.

On whether the chairperson of the electoral commission can verify, tally, and declare results without consulting other commissioners, the court found that the chairperson cannot arrogate to himself the power to verify and tally the results to the exclusion of others.


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