Kenya’s Supreme Court on Monday ruled that William Ruto was the validly elected president of Kenya, sending a sigh of relief to the hitherto anxious supporters of the former deputy president who contested as the candidate for Kenya Kwanza Alliance.
Ruto was declared the winner of the tightly fought race, scraping to victory by a narrow margin of less than two percentage points against Raila Odinga, a veteran opposition politician now backed by the ruling party.
Odinga filed a petition to Kenya’s top court last month, alleging fraud in the vote tallying process and claiming he had “enough evidence” to show he had in fact won the August 9 election, which ranks as one of Africa’s most expensive polls.
However, a panel of seven judges of the country’s apex court on Monday said they were not persuaded by the allegation that the standards of IEBC’s technology failed the test.
“Whereas it is true that KIEMS Kitfailed in 235 polling stations, 86,889 voters were granted the right to vote manually and the requisite forms 32A were successfully filled. IEBC relied on sworn affidavits by Michael Ouma, Moses Sunkuli and Hussein Marjan on August 26, 2022 which were to the effect that it published the interim report by KPMG on 8th June 2022 and embarked on remedial measures aimed at effecting the recommendations ahead of the publication of the final report. While the audit report was released to the public seven days before elections, the voter register was used without any apparent anomalies,” said Kenya’s Chief Justice Martha Koome who read the abridged version of the court decision on behalf of other judges, and said the full judgment would be given after 21 days.
On whether there was interference with the uploading and transmission of Forms 34A, Justice Koome said that there was no credible evidence meeting standard of proof was adduced by petitioners to proof that there was interference in transmission of forms from polling stations to the National Tallying Centre.
“No credible evidence meeting standard of proof was adduced by petitioners. The scrutiny report did not reveal any security breaches of IEBC’s systems. There were no significant differences captured between the forms 34A uploaded on the public portal & physical forms 34A delivered to Bomas that would have affected the overall outcome of the presidential election,” she said.
Citing former journalist and corruption whistle-blower Mr John Githongo’s affidavit and lawyer Julie Soweto’s presentations in court Chief Justice Martha Koome said “Affidavits filed in court must only deal with facts… swearing to falsehoods is a criminal offence.”
According to court, the petitioners did not table any credible evidence of hacking of IEBC systems as they had alleged.
“Scrutiny report also did not reveal any breaches,” Chief Justice Koome added.
On whether the postponement of some elections resulted in voter suppression, CJ Koome said IEBC illustrated with examples “to our satisfaction that there was no nexus between the postponement of elections and voter turnout.”
On whether there were unexplainable discrepancies between the votes cast for presidential candidates and other elective positions, CJ Koome said there were no unexplained significant discrepancies.
“No ballot stuffing was proven,” she added.
As to whether the IEBC chairperson acted unilaterally in tallying and verifying presidential votes at the national tallying centre CJ Koome said the power to verify and tally presidential election results vest not in the IEBC chairperson but the commission; however the four commissioners actively participated in the verification and tallying process.
On the opaque allegations by the four IEBC commissioners, CJ Koome said “Are we to nullify an election on the basis of a last-minute boardroom rupture? To do this would be tantamount to subjecting the sovereign will of the Kenyan people to the quorum antics of IEBC, this we cannot do. We find that the power to tally and verify is not in the chairperson of IEBC but the commission. We also find that the chairperson cannot arrogate the power to tally and verify the results to the Elections Act to the exclusion of other commissioners. That said, we however take cognizance that the four commissioners actively participated in the tallying and verification exercise from the beginning until just before declaration of the final results by the chairperson. We note that aside from their 11th hour walkout, the four commissioners have not placed before this court any document to show the elections result was altered.”
It’s against this background that CJ Koome upheld the election of Mr Ruto who campaigned under the ‘hustler nation’ slogan as the fifth president of the East African nation.
“We declare the election of Ruto as valid. It is our finding that the declared President-Elect (Ruto) acquired 50 percent plus one vote required by the Constitution,” she said.
