As president-elect William Ruto and his supporters celebrated his win in the just concluded presidential election, it is becoming clear his main rival Raila Odinga might challenge it in the Supreme Court.
Raila’s running-mate Martha Karua gave the clearest hint on her social media platform that Raila, who was vying for the fifth time, will challenge Ruto’s win.
She echoed the sentiments of many top politicians and strategists within Raila Odinga’s camp who also suggested Supreme Court is their next stop.
“It is not over till it is over,” said Karua on her Twitter account immediately after Independent Elections and Boundaries Commission Chairman declared William Ruto the winner of the August 9 presidential election.
It is worth noting that Raila Odinga challenged president Uhuru’s 2013 and 2017 presidential victories at the Supreme Court.
In the 2017 Supreme Court petition, Raila managed to convince the court to order a rerun of the presidential election on grounds that the process did not live up to the expectations of a free and fair election.
In this year’s election, however, IEBC made public all election results from polling stations across the country, and any Kenyan would access, the tally to have an idea of who was likely to win the presidential election.
Despite this, 4 out of the 7 commissioners of IEBC called a press conference moments before the presidential winner was declared and expressed concern with the final tally.
“We cannot take ownership of the results that is going to be announced because of the opaque nature of this last phase of this process (presidential election),” said IEBC Vice Chair Juliana Cherera who was flanked by three other commissioners.
The law does not however mandate the IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati to get a majority consensus among fellow commissioners before declaring the winner of the presidential elections.
Some politicians allied to Raila Odinga and attempted to block the IEBC chairman from declaring William Ruto by causing chaos at the Bomas of Kenya, the venue where the presidential winner was to be announced.
It remains to be seen if Raila team will thus challenge this year’s presidential election in the Supreme Court, considering no election observer has questioned the integrity of the General Election.
