Top court to justify poll petition ruling

The Supreme Court is expected to explain the reasons for its decision to uphold Mr Uhuru Kenyatta’s declaration as President on Tuesday.

The Supreme Court judges led by Chief Justice Willy Mutunga met yesterday to finalise their report.

Dr Mutunga told journalists that a meeting he had with the judges was the reason for the delay in his presiding over of the swearing in of HIV and Aids tribunal.

He did not say when he would give the reasons for the dismissal of the petition by Cord leader Raila Odinga.

Dr Mutunga left for Dar es Salaam after swearing in the tribunal.

A source in the Judiciary said the reasons would be released on Tuesday. “The report is complete and will be made public on that day,” the source said Thursday.

The Supreme Court handled three petitions from the results of the presidential election of March 4.

In the first petition, Mr Moses Kuria and Mr Denis Itumbi, two close associates of Mr Kenyatta, had questioned the consideration of all “votes cast” in the formula used by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission in computing the votes for presidential candidates.

They argued that the slightly more than 100,000 rejected votes should not have been included in the final tally.

The six judges agreed with the petitioners and ruled that the rejected votes should not have been included in calculating the final tally.

Mr Odinga’s petition said various shortcomings by the IEBC in the management of the elections had made it impossible to conclude that the country had held free and fair elections as required by the Constitution.

The third petition filed by voters Gladwell Otieno and Zahid Rajan claimed the elections did not meet the constitutional threshold due to the failure in the poll management system.