The seven-judge bench unanimously dismissed consolidated petitions challenging Ruto's victory for lack of merit alongside a failure to meet the evidentiary threshold.
On Monday, Kenya's Supreme Court dismissed petitions challenging William Ruto as president-elect, citing a lack of tangible evidence produced by the petitioners, presidential candidate Raila Odinga and his running mate Martha Karua.
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The seven-judge bench unanimously dismissed consolidated petitions challenging Ruto's victory for lack of merit alongside a failure to meet the evidentiary threshold. The judges said the petitioners also failed to prove that the voting exercise was marred by irregularities that could have compromised the outcome.
"We find that no evidence was submitted to show that William Ruto did not attain the 50 percent plus one vote requirement... the Court found that the illegalities and irregularities pointed out by the petitioners were not of such magnitude as to affect the final result of the presidential election," Chief Justice Martha Koome said.
In their petition, Odinga and Karua alleged that the final results announced by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) were not complete, adding that there were gross disparities in results captured by electronic kits and physical forms.
The consolidated petitions alleged that the polling exercise was marred by infiltration of votes' transmission technology, voter suppression, and ballot stuffing. According to Odinga, there were inconsistencies in voter turnout as captured by Kenya Integrated Election Management System kits and those captured manually.
In one swoop, William Ruto has ended the long running reign of the Kenyatta's, Moi's, and Odinga's. Seems like he is the only student who paid attention in Prof Moi's school of politics and practiced what his Political father taught him.
— Utd Richie (@Utd_Richie) September 5, 2022
The 5th President of Kenya. pic.twitter.com/fp4kjbwDt1
He said that the digital kits captured 14.45 million voters, representing 65.4 percent, but in the final results captured in the recorded forms, the total number of voters stood at 14.2 million. Odinga and his allies said that the IEBC was unable to account for more than 250,000 votes that were cast, excluding votes captured manually.
The Supreme Court, however, said that it found no significant differences found between forms uploaded on the web portal and forms delivered to the IEBC national tallying center.
"We cannot upset an election in which the people have participated without hindrance just because of dissonance at IEBC. None of the parties has flagged anything so significant that it would have affected the outcome... There were no unexplainable variances in votes cast for president and other elective positions," Koome said.
Soon after the ruling upholding Ruto as the incoming president, thousands of his jubilant supporters thronged towns and villages in his strongholds of the Rift valley and central Kenya to celebrate.
The Electoral Commission of #Kenya announced that Deputy President William Ruto won the presidential election. In accordance with the Constitution and the Law Ruto was duly elected with 50.49% while his opponent Raila Odinga obtained 48.85% of the votes pic.twitter.com/H4Efc7rX8u
— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) August 16, 2022