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Kenya’s Supreme Court unanimously dismissed a challenge to the official result of the presidential election and upheld Vice President William Ruto’s victory.
Opposition candidate Raila Odinga’s allegations of irregularities in the otherwise peaceful Aug. 9 election, which saw the electoral commission split and swap allegations of wrongdoing, were marked by last-minute drama.
The court found little or no evidence of the various claims, saying some of them were “nothing more than hot air”.
It also expressed puzzlement over why four dissident commissioners were involved in the final minutes of a vote-counting process they criticized as opaque.
The committee “needs far-reaching reform,” the court acknowledged, “but are we going to cancel the election on the basis of a last-minute board breakdown?”
The court stunned Kenyans in the last election in 2017, overturning the results of Africa’s first presidential election and ordering a new vote after Odinga’s challenge. Then he boycotted that new election.
This time, Mr Odinga has the backing of former rival and outgoing President Uhuru Kenyatta, the latest example of a transformed political coalition in East Africa’s most stable democracy.
Mr Odinga’s team has challenged the technology used by the electoral commission, claiming the votes had been tampered with and arguing that the electoral commission chairman essentially announced the winner alone.
Mr Odinga’s team questioned what was seen as the most transparent election in the country, with tens of thousands of polling stations posting results online within hours of voting, allowing Kenyans to follow up with their own counts.
Such reforms are partly the result of Mr Odinga’s previous electoral challenges.
Now Kenyans wait to see if there will be any anger over the election in a country with a history of sometimes deadly political violence. Turnout in the election was one of the lowest in the history of the country’s multiparty democracy, at less than 65 percent.
Mr Odinga, 77, who has been president for 25 years, said he would accept the court’s ruling.
Mr Ruto, 55, who had a bitter disagreement with Kenyatta after he struck a peace with Mr Odinga to quell the 2017 electoral crisis, has drawn attention to himself by portraying himself as a “dynasty man” who opposes the “dynasty”. Liars” to attract Kenyans Kenyatta and Odinga’s father was Kenya’s first president and vice president.
Mr Ruto now faces the challenge of finding funding to back his campaign promises to the poor, as Kenya’s debt levels are now approaching 70 per cent of its GDP.
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