Kenya’s Odinga rejects election results, will launch legal challenge

Raila Odinga

Kenya’s losing presidential candidate Raila Odinga said on Tuesday his coalition totally rejects the election results that saw Deputy President William Ruto win the presidential vote, and vowed to pursue legal means to challenge the decision.

The veteran opposition leader, who lost his fifth bid for the presidency, urged his supporters to maintain peace and not take the law on their own hands, at a media briefing in the capital.

His first comments on the result came after four of the seven election commissioners said they stood by their decision a day earlier to disown figures announced by electoral commission chairman Wafula Chebukati.

The dramatic series of events has raised fears of violence like that seen after past disputed polls in East Africa’s richest country, including after the 2007 presidential vote when more than 1,200 people were killed in widespread clashes.

Overnight, Odinga’s supporters battled police and burned tyres in the western city of Kisumu and the capital Nairobi’s huge Kibera slum, but quiet had returned to the streets by Tuesday morning.

“Our view is that the figures announced by Chebukati are null and void and must be quashed by a court of law,” said Odinga, a veteran opposition leader and five-time presidential candidate who was backed this time by outgoing President Uhuru Kenyatta.

“What we saw yesterday was a travesty,” he told reporters, but appealed to his supporters to remain peaceful. “Let no one take the law into their own hands,” he said.