Kenya Supreme Court criticizes election board in verdict on polls
KENYA - Kenya’s Supreme Court yesterday criticized the election board for failing to verify official results of last month’s presidential election before announcing them but stopped short of saying there was rigging.
The court was offering a detailed ruling as to why it annulled the Aug. 8 election and ordered a fresh presidential vote within 60 days. The Sept. 1 decision was the first of its kind in Africa.
Election board officials had said incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta won the contest by 1.4 million votes. Opposition leader Raila Odinga rejected that result and said he had won. He has also said the previous two elections were stolen from him.
Kenya has the region’s richest economy and is a diplomatic, trade and security hub for East Africa so the court’s ruling, as well as the fresh election currently scheduled for Oct. 17, is being closely watched. On Monday, the French technology company supporting the election said it would be nearly impossible to be ready for that date.
The court on Sept. 1 identified some procedural problems in a brief ruling but the key finding against the election board on Wednesday was that officials had announced results before being able to verify them.
Kenya used two parallel systems: a quick electronic tally vulnerable to typos and a slower paper system designed as a verifiable, definitive back-up. The official results were based on the electronic tally before the paper results were fully collated, the judges said. The system was designed that way after a disputed 2007 presidential vote sparked violence that killed around 1,200 people and displaced around 600,000 more.
But the board overseeing the 2017 vote did not have all the tally forms when they announced official results, and some forms lacked security features like water marks, signatures or serial numbers, calling their authenticity into question, the court said.
“Not every irregularity, not every infraction of the law is enough to nullify an election. Were it so, there would not be any election in this country, or even the world, that would withstand judicial scrutiny,” said Chief Justice David Maraga. (Reuters.COM/Photo: Reuters.com)