Supreme Court Upholds William Ruto’s Win
The Supreme Court of Kenya on Monday confirmed the election of William Ruto as the fifth President of the Republic of Kenya.
Reading the verdict on Monday 5th Sept 2022, Chief Justice Martha Koome said Ruto garnered 50 percent plus one votes cast.
Ruto had garnered 7.1m while Raila Odinga garnered 6.9m as declared by the IEBC.
While delivering the judgment, the seven-judge bench unanimously validated the results announced by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission – IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati.
According to the judgment, Ruto met the constitutional threshold of 50 per cent +1 of the total valid votes cast and garnered 25 per cent of the votes cast in at least 24 counties.”The presidential election number E005 of 2022 as consolidated with presidential election petition numbers E001, 2,3,4 7 and 8 of 2022 are hereby dismissed,” Koome stated.
“As a consequence, we declare the election of the first respondent as president-elect to be valid under Article143 of the constitution.”
In addition, the seven-judge bench ruled that IEBC conducted the verification and tallying of the votes before announcing the final results.
“We take cognizance of the fact that the fourth, fifth sixth and seventh respondents actively participated in the verification and tallying exercise from the beginning until just before the declaration of results to nullify an election,” stated the Chief Justice.
The court further threw out allegations by chief petitioner Raila Odinga that the forms 34A on the Commission’s portal were dissimilar to those sent from the polling stations
According to judges, the postponement of the elections in Kakamega and Mombasa counties, Kitui Rural, Kacheliba Rongai and Pokot South Constituencies did not cause voter suppression and therefore did not affect the outcome of the presidential race.
The apex court also ruled that the discrepancies between the presidential votes and those cast in other elective seats were accounted for with IEBC explaining that prisoners and Kenyans in the diaspora only voted for the head of state.
“IEBC has offered a plausible explanation for the vote differential citing categories of voters who only voted for the president such as voters and Kenyans in the diaspora.
“There was an insignificant number of stray votes, whose combined effects cannot justify the nullification of the election,” the President of the Supreme Court stated.
Consequently, all the irregularities raised by the eight petitioners, whose cases were consolidated into one did not have the magnitude to affect the final result of the vote.
Furthermore, the highest court in the land sided with Chebukati and IEBC, stating that the technology deployed during the exercise met the standards of integrity, verifiability, security and transparency to guarantee accurate and verifiable results.
The president-elect will be sworn into office on or before Tuesday, September 13, 2022.
