Kenya Supreme Court Annuls Presidential Result

Kenya’s supreme court has declared Uhuru Kenyatta’s victory in presidential elections last month invalid and ordered a new poll within 60 days.

The decision to nullify the result, a first in Kenya, risks plunging the country into political chaos and sets up a new race for the presidency between Kenyatta and the veteran opposition leader Raila Odinga.

The six-judge bench ruled 4-2 in favour of a petition filed by Odinga, who claimed the electronic voting results were hacked and manipulated in favour of the incumbent. Kenyatta had won a second term with 54% of the vote.

East Africa’s biggest economy has a history of disputed elections and political violence.

“The declaration [of Kenyatta’s win] is invalid, null and void,” said Judge David Maranga.

“The first respondent [the election commission] failed, neglected or refused to conduct the presidential election in a manner consistent with the dictates of the constitution.”

The hearing followed a petition filed by Odinga after his defeat last month. Opposition officials repeatedly described the results as a fraud and claimed that Odinga, who leads the National Super Alliance, was the legitimate winner.

Odinga has contested, and lost, the last three elections. His claims of vote rigging in the 2007 elections prompted rioting and retaliation by security forces, tipping the country into its worst crisis for decades. About 1,200 people were killed in the ethnic violence that followed.

In 2013, Odinga said the election was rigged and took his case to the supreme court, but lost.

This time, his team focused on proving that the process for tallying and transmitting results was flawed, rather than proving how much of the vote was rigged. Only days after the election on 8 August, Odinga, 72, vowed to “remove” the government of Kenyatta.

“We predicted they will steal the election and that’s what happened. We are not done yet. We will not give up,” he told a crowd of several thousand gathered on a rubble- and rubbish-strewn wasteland in Kibera, Nairobi’s largest slum and an opposition stronghold.

Human rights groups have said police killed at least 24 people in unrest that followed the vote.