The Supreme Court of Kenya on Monday dismissed the various petitions appealing the result of the 9 August election which saw William Ruto, incumbent vice president of Kenya, emerge as the winner.
By this ruling, the court upheld the election of Mr Ruto as the next president of Kenya.
The ruling came three days after arguments were heard from lawyers representing the two main candidates and rival camps of election commissioners.
There were seven petitions with regards to the presidential election which the court consolidated into one petition as they all sought the same thing, Chief Justice Martha Koome said.
The ruling came three days after arguments were heard from lawyers representing the two main candidates and rival camps of election commissioners.
The election which was held on 9 August saw Mr Ruto emerge winner with 7,176,141 votes, 50.49 per cent of the total votes cast, to defeat his closest challenger, ex-Prime Minister Raila Odinga who polled 6,942,930, 48.85 per cent of votes cast. Mr Ruto also achieved the minimum 25 per cent of votes in 39 counties.
The above results were announced by the chairman of the IEBC, Wafula Chebukati, six days after the elections.
The results were, however, rejected by Mr Odinga who challenged it in court saying the votes were manipulated in favour of Mr Ruto.
The election was highly competitive between the two men leaving the two other contenders almost out of the race.
Also, before the results were announced, four of the seven members of the electoral commission refused to authenticate the result.
“We cannot take ownership of the result that is going to be announced because of the opaque nature of this last phase of the general election,” the BBC quoted Juliana Cherera, the vice-chairperson of the IEBC, as saying on the day the results were announced.
The petitioners argued that the technology deployed by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) did not meet the constitutional and statutory standards.
Justice Koome said the judges were not persuaded by the allegation that the technology failed the test of integrity, verifiability, security and transparency citing various reasons including that the IEBC did not have the capacity to develop the technology, hence outsourcing the development was inevitable.
The second issue claimed there was interference with the results as uploaded to the electoral commission’s portal.
According to the chief justice, there was no evidence that anyone accessed the results transmission system to tamper with the results, hence arguments that the integrity of the public portal was compromised were disproved.
Also, petitioners claimed that election forms in the online results portal were changed from the original printed forms.
Justice Koome said there was no evidence that election forms in the online results portal were changed from the original printed forms.
