The historic candidate, who thought was finally elected to his fifth attempt, was beaten with a hair and began a procedure with the Supreme Court by denouncing irregularities during the count.
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“Like athletes, we ran to the finish line and it took a photo-finish to decide between us. Today the referees are divided. Some say that a candidate won, the others have a Different opinion. “At the time of grasping the Supreme Court of her country, Raila Odonga, himself a background of Kenyan politics, spins the sporting metaphor. As in 2017, the unhappy candidate (48.85 % of the votes) in the presidential election of August 9 decided to challenge the results of the vote by legal means, which crowned the outgoing vice-president William Ruto, of a short head (50.5 % of votes).
Monday, August 22, Odonga arrived in court with his arms cluttered with files and boxes supposed to contain the evidence of the irregularities he denounces. “We are going to defend our democracy, for which so many of us have died […] We do not want to find the system we had at the time,” said the former human rights activist who is made known for his fight in favor of multipartyism in the 1980s. But the evocation of his feats of arms does not really seem to mobilize his militant base. “It’s a lost battle”, let go of one of his advisers who wishes to remain anonymous: “We were just defeated by more clever than us.”
POKER LIMENT
This exceptionally tight ballot has left a bitter taste to Raila Odonga and its Azimio coalition the Umoja (“in search of unity”). And for good reason: the veteran of Kenyan policy, who described the results of “parody”, undergoes his fifth defeat in as many candidacies. A particularly painful failure while he was a favorite, benefiting in particular from the support of the outgoing Head of State Uhuru Kenyatta, and because at 77 years old, this final setback could definitively sound the death knell for presidential ambitions that he has been nourished for three decades.
Hanted up by foreign observers as transparent, Kenyan elections have however experienced several incidents: divisions within the electoral commission, harassment and assassination of several electoral agents, the incomplete announcement of the results. It is in these interstices that the legal advisers of Raila Odonga try to rush to hope to make the election invalidate.
Doubts persist as for the electronic transmission procedures of the results by the electoral commission (IEBC). According to an audit produced by the KPMG firm before the ballot, the cybersecurity systems are porous and the electronic transmission of the results vulnerable. “The announcement of the results has left more questions than answers, especially because the results of twenty-eight constituencies have not been officially announced,” also noted the Kenyan Human Rights Commission (KHRC).
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