Kenya's Supreme Court upholds Ruto's win

Kenya's Supreme Court on Monday upheld William Ruto's victory in the presidential election held last month, dismissing allegations of fraud in the poll by opposition leader Raila Odinga.

In giving its judgment, the Supreme Court unanimously threw out a petition by Odinga who argued the declaration of Ruto as president-elect was null and void.

Martha Koome, Kenya's chief justice, started reading the judgment by highlighting the issues that were submitted before the court. She said there was no evidence of discrepancies in most of the nine issues raised by the petitioners. "The Supreme Court finds that petitioners did not provide a watertight case for the nullification of results on the basis that the 50 percent plus-one constitutional threshold for an outright win was not met," Koome said while delivering the ruling.

"This is a unanimous decision. The petitions are hereby dismissed. As a consequence, we declare the first respondent William Ruto as president-elect."

She added that the court will issue a summary, and then give the full judgment after 21 days.

While expressing dissatisfaction with the judgment delivered by the Supreme Court, James Orengo, lead counsel for Odinga's team, said they accept the decision reached by the court.

"We accept the decision, but do not agree with it. As a seasonal law practitioner, I can say that courts make mistakes," Orengo said. "Today's decision was a very ideological decision and we will put out a scholarly critique of the judgment. However, the rule of law should prevail since the court has the last word."

Key issues

At the center of the election dispute were nine key issues, including the role of the commissioners in verifying and tallying the results.

Odinga argued that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, or IEBC, failed to follow certain procedures, including publicly announcing results from all constituencies, before declaring the president-elect. He also said the IEBC's election technology was compromised to aid rigging in favor of Ruto.

In the consolidated petition, the challengers of the election results also argued that there was interference with the uploading and transmission of electoral forms from the polling stations to the IEBC's portal. The judges said the petitioners did not raise any evidence to support this allegation.

Ruto was declared the winner of the Aug 9 presidential election with 7.18 million votes which represent 50.49 percent of the valid votes cast, against Odinga's 6.94 million votes which represent 48.85 percent.

Following the Supreme Court decision, Ruto will be sworn into office on Sept 13. The court's ruling is final and cannot be appealed.