Defeated Odinga calls Kenya presidential election results a ‘travesty'
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Kenya's Raila Odinga labels presidential election results as a "travesty" after losing to the newly elected President William Ruto.
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Kenyan presidential candidate Raila Odinga
Kenya's Raila Odinga rejected the results of last week's presidential election, which announced Deputy President William Ruto's victory.
"What we saw yesterday (Monday) was a travesty and a blatant disregard of the constitution of Kenya," Odinga said at a press conference a day after the results were issued showing him losing by a narrow margin.
The veteran opposition leader vowed to seek "all constitutional and legal options," pleading with his supporters to keep the peace.
After a tense few days of waiting for the results of the August 9 election, Ruto was declared the victor, narrowly defeating Odinga in a generally peaceful voting process.
The election commission itself split over the outcome, and demonstrators in Odinga's strongholds hurled stones and set fire to tires on Monday.
According to the chairman of the electoral commission, Ruto earned around 50.5% of the vote to nearly 49% for Odinga in last Tuesday's balloting. However, before the declaration, four of the seven electoral commissioners informed media outlets that they could not support the "opaque nature" of the last processes since they did not provide specifics.
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Screams and scuffles broke out in the auditorium, the podium was tossed from the stage, and police rushed in to restore order as a choir continued to sing.
Wafula Chebukati, the commission chairman, revealed the official results minutes later and stated that the two commissioners who remained behind with him had been hurt.
But that did not stop supporters of Odinga from filling the streets in his stomping ground in the lakeside city of Kisumu, where they clashed with police who fired tear gas to disperse them. Protests also took place on Monday in two Nairobi slums which have long been Odinga bastions.
No presidential poll outcome has gone uncontested in Kenya since 2002, and a Supreme Court challenge by Odinga is seen as almost certain, with his running mate Martha Karua saying on Twitter: "It is not over till it is over."
It is not over till it is over …..
— Martha Karua SC (@MarthaKarua) August 15, 2022
The dispute is likely to tarnish the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission's (IEBC) reputation, which has already taken a beating for its handling of Kenya's annulled 2017 election.
But Chebukati, who was also in charge of the IEBC in 2017, insisted that his duties were carried out according to the law of the land despite facing "intimidation and harassment."
