Saying that Kenya’s recent national election that gave President Uhuru Kenyatta another term in office was held in an unconstitutional manner, the country’s Supreme Court has annulled the results of the Aug. 8 vote. The surprising announcement prompted celebrations by opposition candidate Raila Odinga.
The turnabout comes weeks after the elections commission said Kenyatta had beaten Odinga by more than 1 million votes. The court’s decision did not go into deep detail about what led it to invalidate the election.
From Nairobi, NPR’s Eyder Peralta reports:
“The opposition claimed a vast conspiracy to rig the election and now in a 4-2 decision, the Supreme Court has found there were so many irregularities, they affected the integrity of the elections.
“The court has ordered another election within the next 60 days. But the opposition says they can’t trust the same body that bungled this election to carry out a new one.”
Kenyan election officials had tried to create a “rig-proof” system for this election, implementing a decentralized electronic reporting system and a biometric identification system.
Full article from NPR.