Raila Odinga. He won the petition at the supreme court. [Photo: Blick]
The Supreme Court of Kenya on Friday overturned the presidential election calling for a rerun where President Uhuru Kenyatta will have to face arch-rival Raila Odinga again.
From IEBC’s results which Raila disputed, Uhuru won a second term with a reported 54.3 percent of the vote compared to his rival’s 46 percent.
The ruling by Justice David Maraga was historic and shocking but which was hailed from different quarters as being a hallmark of how far the country has come in terms of democracy.
But, it is such a rare occurrence worldwide that the moment was breaking news on many media outlets across the globe.
In the history of elections, the annulment of such magnitude has only happened twice with Kenya becoming the third and only African country to hit such a benchmark.
The first such occurrence was in Ukraine in 2004 when election observers claimed they had witnessed widespread irregularities after which Victor Yanukovych, the loser, took his case to the country’s highest court.
Yanukovych had a victory in the court which agreed with him and ordered a rerun which was conducted on December 26, 2004.
Unfortunately for the petitioner, the repeat exercise gave Viktor Yushchenko victory after garnering 52% of the vote with observers noting the process was fairer than the original one.
When Uhuru’s win was being challenged at the Supreme Court in 2013, later that year in Maldives the same happened. The country’s Supreme Court invalidated the results of the first round presidential elections pitting former President Mohamed Nasheed and Abdulla Yameen where the latter had won. A rerun of the first round was held on November 9 producing a similar result to the annulled election. This necessitated a run-off which was planned for the next day over the need to have a new president in place by November 11.
However, the Supreme Court postponed the run-off to November 16 after Yameen claimed he needed more time to campaign. He won the run-off with his share of the vote rising from 30% in the first round to 51% in the second round; in comparison to Nasheed's which increased by only 2% between rounds.
The most recent to suffer an annulment was Austria after the country’s Constitutional Court ruled in May 2016 in favour of petitioner Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party.
Hofer claimed that Alexander Van De Bellen had been declared the winner in an election that had massive vote-counting irregularities.
In a repeat election in December 2016, however, Van De Bellen trounced Hofer again by garnering 53.8% of the vote.
For the Kenyan case, the constitution allows that a rerun is held within 60 days while a runoff would be in 30 days.
The SCORK ruling is a big victory not only for the court but also for other constitutional independent institutions which have suffered a lot of interference from the executive and the country’s belligerent opposition.
Both parties have resumed campaigns to woo voters for the exercise to be carried out on November 1.