The Kenyan opposition has filed a petition with the country’s Supreme Court, dismissing as “fundamentally flawed” the results of last week’s election won by President Uhuru Kenyatta, his longtime rival.
In a statement released on Friday, the lawyers representing the National Super Alliance (NASA) coalition outlined alleged irregularities in the August 8 presidential vote and demanded new polls.
“The entire process of tallying recording, transmitting, verifying and confirmation of results was so fundamentally flawed that you cannot talk of any meaningful results,” NASA said in the statement.
“This petition asks the court and by extension the people of Kenya to nullify the entire exercise because it is fatally compromised, in order to pave the way for fresh, legitimate elections,” it added.
The opposition dismissed the election process as “so badly conducted and marred with such glaring irregularities that it does not matter who won, or who was declared the winner.”
Kenyatta was declared the winner of last week’s election with 1.4 million votes and a 54-percent support, but opposition leader Raila Odinga said the results were false, without presenting evidence.
“It is a petition by millions of Kenyans who would like to see justice done in our country and we hope that through this petition we can finally transform the electoral process in our country,” Odinga said.
The opposition leader, who lost his third bid for presidency in the recent election, said pursuing this claims through legal channels would not mean an end to street protests by his supporters, which he said should peacefully continue.
Odinga has claimed that incumbent Kenyatta’s victory in the recent election was a result of hacking and manipulation of the electronic vote counting system.
The claim has sparked massive protests in two major slums in the capital, Nairobi, and in the west of Kenya, where Odinga enjoys huge support.
Dozens have reportedly been killed in the violence while the international community has called on Odinga to calm his supporters.
The high court’s ruling will be in two weeks, after it hears the opposition’s petition and legal responses from Kenyatta’s Jubilee Party and country’s electoral commission.