NAIROBI, Kenya Aug 22 – Two more petitions have been filed at the Supreme Court to challenge the victory handed to William Ruto as President-Elect following the August 9 elections.
They were filed by John Njoroge Kamau and another by four activists-Khelef Khalifa, George Osewe, Ruth Mumbi and Grace Kamau.
This raises to three the number of petitions so far filed by midday after Azimio One Kenya coalition party leader Raila Odinga filed his earlier this morning.
Odinga, a veteran opposition leader who ran with the backing of the ruling party, has rejected the outcome of the poll, branding it a “travesty.”
He narrowly lost to Ruto by around 230,000 votes — less than two percentage points.
Sources said the fourth was also expected by a youth advocacy group.
All the petitioners argue that the August 9 presidential election was marred by massive irregularities and want the final results as announced by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Chairman Wafula Chebukati quashed.
Anyone wishing to file a petition in the Supreme Court against Ruto’s victory has until 2pm Monday which is the deadline for the 7-day window since the declaration of the results by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission.
Ruto was declared president-elect on Monday, scraping past Odinga with a margin of less than two percentage points, after an anxious days-long wait for results of the August 9 vote.
The outcome has been challenged not only by Odinga’s camp but also, in a bizarre twist, by four out of seven commissioners at the election body that oversaw the vote.
“We want to see justice done so that peace can be found,” 77-year-old Odinga said at his Nairobi home after a meeting with religious leaders.
“We have decided to use the law to go before the Supreme Court and table our evidence to show that it was not an election but a joke.”
The veteran opposition leader has now been defeated in all five presidential votes he has contested, even though this year he ran with the backing of outgoing President Uhuru Kenyatta and the weight of the ruling party behind him.
No presidential poll outcome has gone uncontested in Kenya since 2002, and the disputes have led to bloodshed in the past.
In August 2017, the Supreme Court annulled the election after Odinga rejected Kenyatta’s victory. Dozens of people were killed by police in post-poll protests.
The aftermath of this year’s court decision is being keenly watched as a test of democratic maturity in East Africa’s richest economy.
Kenya‘s worst electoral violence occurred after the 2007 vote, when more than 1,100 people died in bloodletting between rival tribes.
