High court: Kenyan vote results couldn’t be checked

NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenya’s Supreme Court said Wednesday it nullified President Uhuru Kenyatta’s re-election largely because the electoral commission refused to allow an investigation of its computerized system that transmitted results.

The court judges said because the electoral commission refused to allow scrutiny of its computer servers it had no option but to agree with the claim by opposition leader Raila Odinga that the computerized data of the August presidential elections had been interfered with.

The electoral commission has set Oct. 17 as the date for a fresh election.

The Supreme Court said its order to view the computerized data was “a golden opportunity” for the electoral commission to present evidence to debunk Odinga’s claim of interference.

“IEBC’S contumacious disobedience of this order … in critical areas leaves us with no option but to accept the petitioner’s (Odinga’s) claims that the IEBC IT system was infiltrated and the data therein interfered with or IEBC officials interfered with the data or simply refused to accept that it had bungled the whole transmission system and was unable to verify the data,” said Justice Philomena Mwilu, who read part of the judgment.

The electoral commission also failed to implement verification measures required by law and the constitution to ensure the election was credible, said the judgment.

Justice Jackton Ojwang, one of the two judges who gave a dissenting ruling, said Odinga’s case did not meet the threshold of evidence.

Kenya’s police tear gassed opposition and ruling party supporters who had gathered outside the Supreme Court and started jeering and pushing each other, threatening violence, said a witness.