KENYAN opposition leader Raila Odinga rejected as ‘null and void’ the result of an August 9 presidential election he was declared to have lost, adding on Tuesday that Kenya’s democracy faces a long legal crisis.
His first comments on the result came minutes after four of the seven election commissioners said they stood by their decision a day earlier to disown the result of the presidential poll, saying the final tallying process had been ‘opaque.’
‘Our view is that the figures announced by (electoral commission chairman Wafula) Chebukati are null and void and must be quashed by court of law,’ Odinga, who was making his fifth bid for the presidency, told a news conference.
He broadcast the dissenting commission members’ own news conference at his own venue before taking the stage.
Speaking for the group, electoral commission deputy chairperson Juliana Cherera said the results that gave current deputy president William Ruto a wafer-thin victory over Odinga were erroneously aggregated. She said the elections had been conducted in a proper manner.
Chebukati declared Ruto the winner on Monday with 50.49 percent of the vote against Odinga’s 48.5 percent. Minutes earlier, his deputy Cherera had told media at a separate location that she and three other commissioners disowned the results.
The dramatic events of Monday have raised fears of violence like that seen after past disputed polls.
In 2017, more than 100 people were killed after the Supreme Court overturned the result citing anomalies in the voting process. A decade earlier, more than 1,200 people were killed in widespread violence after the 2007 presidential vote.
With memories still fresh of post-election bloodshed in usually stable Kenya following elections in 2007 and 2017, Odinga has faced calls from home and abroad to commit to resolving any concerns over the election outcome in the courts.
At a crowded restaurant in the western city of Kisumu, an Odinga stronghold, there was sporadic applause as he rejected yesterday’s results on live television.
In Kisumu and Nairobi’s huge Kibera slum, where most voters also strongly favour Odinga, quiet had returned to the streets after protesters battled police and burned tyres overnight.
