Full Judgement on Kenya's August 8, 2017 was Delivered Today

[Joe Kihara Munugu]

Full Judgement on Kenya's Elections Delivered
In full judgement Kenya's Supreme Court majority judges, who including CJ David Maraga, have reaffirmed their ruling of September 1, 2017 in which they nullified Kenya's August 8 Presidential election results as null and void.  Most of the majority reasoning focused on the election results process - transmission, tallying and veracity of transmitted result forms 34A, 34B and 34C.  They said that IEBC did not verify the results, before announcing Uhuru Kenyatta as the winner, as required by law. The majority judgement also said that IEBC could not provide all Forms 34A arguing that presidential results were determined by Forms 34B. Chief Justice David Maraga said IEBC should back to the drawing board and conduct a new credible and verifiable election.

In their dissenting judgements both Justice Njoki Ndungu and Prof. Jackton Ojwang ruled that the irregularities in the election were not enough to nullify the election.  They said that electronic transmission was a complementary process - to complement the manual transmission of the paper forms. The dissenting judges said that voters are supreme and their rights are fundamental and protected by the Constitution...that other ways of verifying the election results should have been employed instead of nullifying the election. Recounting of the votes held in secure custody by the IEBC should have been preferred. They said the petitioner, Raila Odinga, failed to prove his case...that the election was conducted in a credible manner and Raila’s “broad claims” did not warrant nullification of the election.

On September 1, the Supreme Court nullified the August 8 elections conducted by IEBC citing that there were irregularities. The IEBC was ordered to conduct another poll within 60 days. The IEBC has scheduled for October 17 for the fresh election.