Back To The Booth

Kenyans are hoping for the best in the presidential election that has been scheduled for October 17 after the Supreme Court nullified the election that was held in August because of electoral irregularities.

- John Cherian

THE KENYAN SUPREME COURT’S UNEXPECTED decision in the last week of August to nullify the election victory of incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta in the general election held on August 8 is being hailed as a landmark judgment, unprecedented in the politics of the African continent. A six-member bench voted four to two in favour of cancelling the presidential election and ordering a new one within 60 days. The court said that the “recently concluded election was not conducted according to the Constitution” and was therefore “invalid, null and void”. It blamed the country’s Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), as the Kenyan election commission is called, for not following the basic principles of transparency and the rule of law in conducting the election.

The Supreme Court, among other things, found fault with the procedure the IEBC used for the tallying of votes. The IEBC’s lawyers admitted in court that the “official website” that released the results was not in fact the “public portal” the public was initially led to believe it was. The IEBC also conceded that on many occasions it had bypassed the electronic system while tallying the votes. The international media and the majority of the international observers, including those from the African Union, had pronounced the elections generally fair and free. They relied on the results relayed by the “official portal” of the IEBC to come to this conclusion. The IEBC had argued in the Supreme Court that despite some of the glaring errors that were pointed out, the margin of Kenyatta’s victory was so big that the errors would not have altered the final outcome.

MISSING FORMS