Kenya’s opposition has alleged that results from more than a third of polling stations in this month’s presidential election contained “fatal and irredeemable irregularities” as it seeks to overturn President Uhuru Kenyatta’s victory. In legal documents filed to the Supreme Court, the National Super Alliance (Nasa) also said the electoral commission “selectively manipulated, engineered and/or deliberately distorted the votes cast” to deny Raila Odinga, the opposition leader, hundreds of thousands of votes. Nasa last week decided to contest the election result in court after Mr Kenyatta won 54 per cent of the vote to Mr Odinga’s 44 per cent, a difference of 1.4m votes. Independent monitors’ parallel tallies recorded a similar result to the electoral commission based on a representative sample of almost 2,000 polling stations.
But Mr Odinga, who was making his fourth bid for the presidency, insists there was massive rigging in the August 8 poll. He first alleged the electoral commission’s computer system was hacked and then that the commission falsified results.
The 25,000 pages of court documents filed over the weekend and seen by the Financial Times are the first evidence put forward by the opposition to support his claims. The appeal is based on analysis of the results forms from the almost 41,000 polling stations and 290 parliamentary constituencies, which aggregated the polling station results.
These “ought to have been accurate, legitimate and verifiable across the country [but] are demonstrably contradictory, defective and bear fatal irregularities affecting 14,078 polling stations”, the opposition petition states.
Full Article: Kenya opposition outlines vote-rigging case ahead of court battle.