Rerun of Kenyan election ordered
KENYA’S Supreme Court has nullified President Uhuru Kenyatta’s election win last month, ruling it unconstitutional and calling for new elections within 60 days.
Mr Kenyatta said he “personally disagrees” with the ruling but respects it, although he lashed out at the judges, saying that “six people have decided they will go against the will of the people”.
He also called for peace in a country where some elections have been followed by violence.
No presidential election in the East African economic hub has ever been nullified.
Opposition members danced in the streets, revelling in the setback for Mr Kenyatta, the son of the country’s first president, in the long rivalry between Kenya’s leading political families.
“It’s a very historic day for the people of Kenya and by extension the people of Africa,” said opposition candidate Raila Odinga, who had challenged the vote.
“For the first time in the history of African democratisation, a ruling has been made by a court nullifying irregular election of a president. This is a precedentsetting ruling.”
The six-judge bench ruled four to two in favour of the petition filed by Mr Odinga.
He claimed the electronic voting results were hacked into and manipulated in favour of Mr Kenyatta, who had won a second term with 54 per cent of the vote.
The court did not place blame on Mr Kenyatta or his party.
It said the election commission “committed illegalities and irregularities ... in the transmission of results, substance of which will be given in the detailed judgment of the court” that will be published within 21 days.
Mr Odinga called for the election commission to be disbanded and said the opposition would ask that electoral officials be prosecuted.
Lead counsel for the president Ahmednassir Abdulahi told the court that the nullification was a “very political decision” but said they will live with the consequences.
Mr Odinga’s lawyer had asked the court to invalidate Mr Kenyatta’s win, saying scrutiny of the forms used to tally the votes had found anomalies that affected nearly five million votes.
The electoral commission had said there was a hacking attempt but it failed.
International election observers, including former US secretary of state John Kerry, had said they saw no interference with the vote.
Two dozen countries including the US, which had already congratulated Mr Kenyatta on his victory, issued a joint statement saying the court’s ruling “demonstrated Kenya’s resilient democracy and commitment to the rule of law”.