Kenya’s main opposition leader Raila Odinga on Monday said he believes that he has won the recently held election, but he will respect the Supreme court ruling on his petition, reported The Africa News.
Odinga and another presidential election candidate Martha Karua filed a petition to the country’s top court last week, challenging the results of the August 9 election.
Odinga’s legal team accused a team working for Deputy President William Ruto to have hacked into the election system and replaced genuine pictures of polling station result forms with fake ones, thus increasing Ruto’s vote share.
In a recent press conference, Odinga said he has full confidence in the Supreme Court ruling despite saying that he won the just concluded presidential election. He claimed that he had proof that he had won the election, which requires a candidate to get 50% of the vote plus one. He wants a recount.
The 77-year-old Odinga lost his fifth bid for the presidency by a margin of just around 230,000 votes, which is less than two percentage points. Accoridng to the results declared by the electoral commission chairman Wafula Chebukati, Odinga got 48.8% of the vote in the election compared to Mr Ruto’s 50.5%.
In the 72-page petition, the opposition leader’s legal team alleges that Kenya’s electoral commission chairman Wafula Chebukati failed to tally around 140,000 votes.
The election commission has split and filed competing responses – four commissioners disowned the result, and the chairman and two others supported it.
The Supreme Court must rule by Sept. 5. If they order an annulment, a new vote must be held within 60 days.
It is feared that the dispute could result in violence similar to that which followed disputed polls in 2007 when more than 1,200 people were killed and again in 2017 when more than 100 people died.
