Kenya’s Supreme Court has upheld the victory of former Deputy President William Ruto in the August 9 presidential election, after ruling on a number of petitions brought by his closest challenger Raila Odinga.
The unanimous verdict was delivered on Monday by Martha Koome, the chair of the seven-member court.
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“We declare the election of the president-elect to be valid,” she said.
On August 15, Ruto had been declared the winner of the ballot by Wafula Chebukati, the head of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) with 50.4 percent of the vote to Odinga’s 48.8 percent.
In a dramatic split just before the announcement of the results, four of the seven commissioners disowned the result.
But Koome said that “apart from their eleventh-hour denunciation of the verification process …the four commissioners have not shown any evidence that the election was compromised”.
She also said the court found no evidence that the results had been tampered via hacking of the IEBC servers, as was alleged by Odinga’s camp.
The decision paves the way for Ruto, 55, to be sworn in as Kenya’s 5th president in the coming days.
Ruto was elected in 2013 and 2017 alongside outgoing President Uhuru Kenyatta, as his deputy. But the duo fell out in 2018 after an unexpected truce between the president and his erstwhile archrival Odinga.