Kenya’s opposition party to challenge Uhuru’s re-election in Supreme court

Kenya’s main opposition party will file a court petition against President Uhuru Kenyatta’s re-election.

The National Super Alliance (NASA) coalition on Wednesday said after the August 8 polls, vote tallying and results transmission process by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) was flawed.

“We had said we will not go court. But with the raid on civil society and determination to silence all voices that could seek legal redress like AFRICOG and the Kenya Human Rights Commission, we have now decided to move to the Supreme Court and lay before the world the making of a computer-generated leadership,” said Raila Odinga in a statement titled ‘Kenyans say no to computer generated leaders.’

Read: Kenyan Civil Society Under Assault, worrying trend into Uhuru’s final term

“By going to court, we are not legitimizing misplaced calls by some observers for us to concede but are seeking to give to those who braved the long lines in the morning chill and hot afternoon on Tuesday August 8th 2017; mothers with their children tied on their backs; the sick, people with disabilities, old and young a chance to be heard.”

The opposition leader emphasised that, “Our decision to go to court constitutes a second chance for the Supreme Court. The Court can use this chance to redeem itself, or, like in 2013, it can compound the problems we face as a country.

We will show how they shamelessly cooked results from non-existent polling stations and fake un-gazetted Presiding and Returning officers. They gave figures from non-existent Forms 34A and 34B; they scrambled to manufacture such forms; switched vote numbers; and how they openly swindled to reach predetermined consistent vote numbers. They cooked numbers to the extent that vote tallies often surpassed registered voters in polling stations.

IEBC  declared President Uhuru Kenyatta the winner of the August 8th election having complied with provisions of Article 138 (4), that is, attained 54.07 percent of the valid votes cast and at least 25 percent of the votes cast in 35 counties.

Following the gazette of the declaration, the next step will be the swearing-in of the President which was scheduled for August 29th as per Article 141 (2a) which states the first Tuesday following the two-week period after the declaration in the event no petition has been filed.

However, now that the opposition will be filing a petition, the swearing in of the president will be not later than September 12th.  

The Supreme Court will have to make a determination  within two weeks.

Read: Kenya Judiciary: Next battle front for aggrieved and dissatisfied candidates with electoral disputes

Read the whole statement by the NASA coalition

My fellow Kenyans,

For the third straight election in a row, the voice of the people has been stilled, and for the third time in a decade, the candidate who lost the election has been declared President.

This year, Kenyans excitedly voted in a peaceful election that even the most democratic nations in the world would have been proud of.

But this democratic promise abruptly evaporated when those who wield power clung to their old, no-holds-barred script of rejecting the people’s democratic will and holding on to their rule by whatever means.

Once the polls closed last Tuesday, the IEBC began streaming so-called provisional presidential results not backed by Form 34As as required by law.

Yesterday, IEBC CEO Ezra Chiloba finally made the stunning admission that the Commission was not able to supply all Form34As yet. This means that both the provisional and final results announced last week are null and void and that Uhuru Kenyatta was not lawfully declared winner.

From the start, the IEBC was illegally releasing unverified results to create the expectation of an Uhuru Kenyatta victory. This was the equivalent of guaranteeing violence if the final verified results indicated Uhuru had lost.
Then there was the bizarre phenomenon of Uhuru Kenyatta’s “lead” staying at around a consistent 11 percent throughout the release of the “results!” surprisingly, this same pattern also occurred in many gubernatorial races across the country.

Such a fixed margin has never been maintained throughout any democratic election anywhere in the world. But it happened here because an algorithm had been introduced to rig the outcome. It happened in full view of all our people and all the election observers.

Then finally, at midnight last Friday, we saw the IEBC announce that Uhuru Kenyatta had been elected president, even though the Commission continued to acknowledge that only about 29,000 of the 41,000 verified Forms 34As had been tallied!

Why was there this fanatical rush to judgment on the most vital matter that any democratic nation EVER faces, the election of its President for the next five years? And why did the IEBC re