Kenya Election: Supreme court to rule on all challenges by Monday

Kenya’s Supreme Court continued hearing arguments in challenges to the presidential election on Friday.

Losing opposition candidate Raila Odinga is among those challenging the results and alleging a range of problems with the election process.

Deputy President William Ruto was declared the winner earlier this month with just over 50% of votes.

The court must rule on all challenges by the end of Monday.

Odinga asserts that the process was marked by criminal subversion and is seeking that the outcome be nullified and a new vote be ordered.

The peaceful election turned chaotic in the final minutes before the declaration when the electoral commission split and a majority of commissioners said they couldn’t support the result.

The dissenting commissioners and the chairman traded accusations of misconduct, extending the uncertainty in East Africa’s most stable democracy.

Until then, the election had been seen as the most transparent, with the commission posting more than 46,000 results forms online from polling stations for anyone to do the math themselves.

The petition singles out commission chairman Wafula Chebukati, who declared Ruto the winner.

It asserts that he “set out to subvert the sovereign will of the people of Kenya and overthrow the constitutional order” by declaring results that had not been completely tallied and verified.

Twenty-seven constituencies allegedly left out would have affected the outcome, the petition suggests.

It also alleges manipulation of some results forms and computer data and asserts that the actions made the difference in the close election in which Odinga received almost 49% of votes.