The seven Supreme Court judges have unanimously upheld the election of William Saomei Ruto as Kenya’s fifth President.
Ruto, who will be sworn in on 13th September 2022 was declared the President-elect in the 2022 general elections.
Chief Justice Martha Koome read the short unanimous decision on behalf of the bench and directed that the full judgement will be ready in 21 days.
While dismissing the case by the 8 petitioners, the seven judges ruled that Ruto was duly elected.
The judges ruled that the petitioner failed to produce credible evidence to prove their allegations including that of systemic ballot staffing and tampering of form 34A.
“Not a single document has been adduced by the petitioners to prove systemic ballot staffing,” the seven judges ruled.
The Apex Court also found that the logs presented in court by the petitioners were not genuine.
In addition, the judges did not find technology at fault as argued by the petitioners.
“No credible evidence was adduced to prove that anyone accessed the RTS,” the judges said.
The court also took note that none of the agents from the contested polling stations swore an affidavit.
Chebukati’s jurisdiction
The petitioners also argued that the IEBC Chairperson Wafula Chebukati had no jurisdiction to postpone elections in some constituencies. However, the court found that Section 55 (b) of Elections Act which provides circumstances under which provides for circumstances under which the election can be postponed gives the Chair powers to postpone elections.
The CJ said that according to the constitution, the IEBC Chair can not allocate himself powers to tally and verify the results of presidential elections as occurred at the Bomas.
However, the judges found that the four commissioners who contested the results announced by Chebukati took part in the tallying and announced results in turns. Therefore, the IEBC chair did not tally and verify the elections alone since all the commissioners were together until the 11th hour when they were about to announce the presidential results.
The court added that even though there was malaise in the IEBC, the four commissioners did not provide evidence to show discrepancies.
This led the apex court to question, “Are we to nullify elections on the basis of a last minute rupture?”
The Apex Court also found that the difference in figures during tallying of the votes was corrected by IEBC.
The judges agreed that President-elect William Ruto did attain the constitutional threshold of 50%+1 votes.
While dismissing the petitions each party was ordered to bear their own costs.
Azimio La Umoja presidential candidate Raila Odinga and his running mate Martha Karua disputed Ruto’s win.
They argued that the elections were not credible and fair as they were interfered with in the system.
