It was a narrow win. With a lead of less than two percentage points, William Ruto became the new President of Kenya. Loser Odinga yells foul and wants to contest the result.
A day after the presidential election in Kenya, loser Raila Odinga announced that he would contest the result. According to the Electoral Commission, the previous Vice President William Ruto won the vote on August 9 with 50.49 percent; Odinga received 48.85 percent of the votes. The results announced are “null and void,” Odinga wrote on Twitter.
At a press conference in the capital, Nairobi, he said: “In our view, there is neither a legitimately and validly declared winner nor an elect president.” He will exhaust “all available constitutional options” to have the result overturned in court.
Around 140,000 more votes cast?
Shortly before, four of the seven members of the Kenyan Electoral Commission had also refused to recognize the official election results. The deputy chairwoman of the electoral commission, Juliana Cherera, described the results as “absurd”. According to her, around 140,000 more votes were cast than there were registered voters. The sum of the votes would be 100.01 percent.
Cherera and three other colleagues stayed away from the announcement of the election results the day before. On Tuesday, local media also reported the killing of an election official responsible for counting votes in a Nairobi constituency.
Election observers from the African Union and the East African Development Community (IGAD) did not find any irregularities during the vote. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres spoke to election winner Ruto and expressed his “admiration for the way [gebracht]how the Kenyans conducted these elections,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in New York on Tuesday. Guterres hopes the electoral process will be completed within the constitutional framework.
Statement of the Vice-Chairman of the Election Commission Tweet Odinga
Source: Stern
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