By Sarah Omondi
The Supreme Court of Kenya has dismissed a petition by Azimio Presidential candidate Raila Odinga challenging the victory of President elect William Ruto and upheld the win.
The court, in a unanimous decision, said that Dr Ruto indeed garnered 7.1 million votes (50.49 percent) while Mr Odinga got 6, 942, 930 votes representing 48.85 percent.
Below are some of the court findings
The power to tally and verify is not a preserve of IEBC Chair but the Commission’s. The four dissenting commissioners were active during tallying and verification from the beginning until before the declaration.
The four did not provide any document in court to show that the elections were altered. Are we to nullify an election on the basis on last minute rapture whose details remain scanty? This we cannot do.
How can we upset an election that Kenyans participated without any hindrance? The current dysfunctionality doesn’t affect the conduct of the 2022 elections. Notwithstanding the differences, we find that IEBC carried out the tallying and verification in accordance with the constitution.
Rejected votes cannot be taken into account in determining whether a Presidential candidate attained the constitutional 50 percent plus one.
We are not persuaded by Law Society of Kenya who attempted to persuade us to review our position on exclusion of rejected votes in computing the total votes cast.
The court finds that there was no evidence submitted to show that President elect William Ruto did not achieve 50 percent plus one vote and it is our finding that the declared President attained the required threshold.
We are of the view that the pointed irregularities were not of magnitude to affect the outcome of the Presidential election.
The court has dismissed the E005 petition and declared election of Dr Ruto as valid.
