Prime Minister Raila Odinga has accused IEBC for failing to hold a free and fair election/FILE
NAIROBI, Kenya, Mar 16 – Prime Minister Raila Odinga has finally filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to order a fresh presidential election.
In the petition Odinga says the declaration of Uhuru Kenyatta as president elect was illegal since he did not win the election by 50 percent plus one vote as required by the Constitution.
Immediately after filing the petition, lead lawyer George Oraro expressed confidence that they have a strong case which will overturn Kenyatta’s win.
Oraro also revealed that they have sued Independent Electoral and Boundaries (IEBC) Chairman Issack Hassan, IEBC, President-elect Uhuru and his deputy William Ruto.
Oraro says they are going to present a strong case even though they have not gotten all the materials they needed for the petition.
Separately, Prime Minister Raila Odinga has accused IEBC for failing to hold a free and fair election.
Addressing the press ahead of filing of the petition, Odinga emphasised that there was manipulation of results and defended CORD’s challenge of the election results.
“I want to state once again that I am not challenging the IEBC election outcome because I am determined to be declared President,” he said.
“There is no democratic goal higher than respecting the will of the people to decide whom they want to lead the nation. And barring mass violence, there is no crime higher than subverting the outcome of a Presidential election,” he added.
He further explained that the country is now seeing in this electoral battle, the hidden struggle between the forces of change and of the status quo.
He urged his supporters to maintain peace saying they have taken democracy to court.
“When Kenya burned five years ago after an election so tainted that Judge Kriegler said no one could be sure who won it, I readily decided to make the sacrifice that was needed to keep Kenya whole,” he explained.
“But what I regret is that we did not put in place any mechanism to identify and punish who the perpetrators of that election crime were,” he emphasised.
He added that the failure and collapse of the IEBC, on a catastrophic scale on the polling day, fundamentally changed the system of polling and the number of votes cast.
He explained that these issues led to inordinate and inexplicable delays at the polling stations thereby reverting Kenya to the discredited manual system, with all the attendant risks and opportunities for abuse and manipulation which in fact took place.
“Between February and March, the IEBC tinkered with the final register severally, and it is not clear which register was in fact used in the final tallying of the votes,” he said.
“On the polling day, officers of a company by the name Kencall EPZ Limited, a call centre, were reportedly receiving the results of the general elections and specifically the Presidential ones,” he added.
He openly questioned how and why IEBC allowed Kencall to co-host both its server and that of the TNA, which may have compromised the integrity of the electoral process or at very least indicates that the TNA had access to information that should have been confidential to IEBC alone.
“Despite my agents regularly updating and complaining to the IEBC about the incidences of electoral frauds, malpractices and irregularities they discovered during the elections, the IEBC neglected, refused or failed to act,” he said.
“Electronic voter identification kits were not functioning, officials and clerks had forgotten passwords, batteries were flat and kits were unable to charge among other impermissible reasons all of which could have been prevented by the IEBC,” he added.
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