Raila Odinga says he would file a Supreme Court petition a week after being placed second in the presidential contest. The five-time presidential candidate dubbed the results, which gave Deputy President William Ruto the win, a “joke.”
On Monday, August 15, the head of the election commission reported that Ruto received 50.49% of the votes while Odinga received 48.85%. The next day, four of the seven commissioners chastised chairman Wafula Chebukati for his “opaque” administration and lack of consultation.
For the last two decades, all Kenyan elections have been marred by conflicts, occasionally resulting in violent riots.
This time, any petition had to be presented to the Supreme Court by August 22nd. The Supreme Court then has two weeks to provide a verdict, which might result in a fresh election within 60 days.
Kenya being what it is, the Supreme Court’s decision to declare polling station results in final simply reduced election fraud in the polling station. As a consequence, candidates in 2022 considered it prudent to inflate their votes at the voting station in the belief that the results would be definitive.
The next brilliant move will be to declare this election null and void due to mathematical nonsense. In Kiambu County, for example, the president received 300,000 more votes than the other seats.
It is permissible for voters to be handed six voting papers and are not permitted to leave the polling place with more than six. How come the president gets more votes than the MCA, for example? So, one can have opted to vote simply for the president and toss the others away?
We understand that they cannot be discarded. They were either spoiled ballot papers or stray ballot papers. In such circumstances, all ballot papers for each position should be counted.
If the Supreme Court declares that all ballot papers for all elected seats must be counted, I think electoral infidelity in Kenya will be a thing of the past. Make it a crime for any single polling station to have different counts for all ballots for each position.
“We want justice so that peace may be established,” Odinga said Saturday from his Nairobi residence after a meeting with religious leaders.
