Deputy President Elect William Samoei Ruto has filed a response to Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s petition challenging the presidential election results released early this month terming it as insufficient to invalidate the results.
Ruto, who is the fourth respondent in the petition, says that the petition filed by Odinga lacks the legal and factual basis to invalidate the presidential polls.
Odinga filed a petition at the Supreme Court last week calling for the nullification of the presidential election results where Jubilee Alliance’s Uhuru Kenyatta was declared the winner.
Odinga claimed that the exercise was marred by massive irregularities and other malpractices including rigging.
According to Ruto, the claims in Odinga’s petition cannot lead to invalidation of the presidential election results as announced by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC).
Ruto claims that the voter register was not manipulated as alleged by the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) leader.
He further argues that the court lacks jurisdiction on the procurement of the Biometric Voter Registration kits, the e-poll books and other materials used by the IEBC in the electoral process.
The response by Ruto comes a day after the IEBC chairman Ahmed Issack Hassan filed a similar response to the petition saying that the petition lacks legal, factual and constitutional framework.
Hassan is the second respondent after the IEBC while President Elect Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy Ruto are the third and fourth respondents respectively.
Odinga has alleged that the IEBC’s vote transmission system was faulty while the voter register was manipulated in favour of the Jubilee Alliance.
Source:citizennews.co.ke
