Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga has filed a Supreme Court appeal against Uhuru Kenyatta’s narrow victory in the presidential election’s first round.
Report by BBC
Kenyatta beat Odinga comfortably by 50,7% to 43,28% on March 4, avoiding a run-off by only 8 100 votes. But Odinga has accused the electoral authorities of manipulating the result.
Police fired teargas to disperse about 100 supporters of his Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (Cord) who had gathered outside the Supreme Court.
The police had warned them that they would not be allowed to do so. Some of the crowd were wearing t-shirts bearing slogans including “I support the petition” and “Democracy on trial”.
The presidential, legislative and municipal elections held recently, were the first since the 2007 poll which set off ethnic and political violence in which more than 1 200 people were killed.
Kenyatta and his running mate, William Ruto, are facing trial on charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for allegedly fuelling the unrest. They deny the charges.
Lawyers for Odinga said their petition to the Supreme Court included allegations of vote manipulation, as well as problems with the registration of voters and an electronic vote counting mechanism.
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“I have no hesitation whatsoever in lawfully challenging the election outcome,” Odinga told reporters outside his offices in Nairobi. “These failures dwarf anything Kenyans have ever witnessed in any previous election,” he added.
However, the prime minister urg-ed his supporters not to resort to violence.
“We cannot begin what is supposed to be a new era under a new constitution in the same old ways,” he added, referring to the charter adopted in 2010.
