Kenya Presidential Election Petition, 2013 | |
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Coat of Arms of Kenya
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Court | Supreme Court of Kenya |
Full case name | Raila Odinga & 5 others v Independent Electoral & Boundaries Commission & 3 others [2013] |
Court membership | |
Judges sitting | The Hon. Justice Willy Mutunga (Chief Justice) Hon. Justice Philip Kiptoo Tunoi Hon. Justice Jackton Boma Ojwang Hon. Justice Mohamed Khadhar Ibrahim Hon. Justice Smokin Wanjala Hon. Lady Justice Njoki Susanna Ndung'u |
Case opinions | |
Decision by | Majority |
Concurrence | 6 |
Concur/dissent | 6/0 |
Dissent | 0 |
The Kenya Presidential Election Petition of 2013 was an election petition aiming to declare the Kenya presidential election 2013 invalid. The Petition was filed at the Supreme Court of Kenya on 16 March 2013.
The Report of the Kriegler Commission on the crisis that followed the 2007 general election placed a special requirement of fiduciary duty on the Supreme Court of Kenya in relation to any matter alleging election fraud.
The main petitioner Raila Odinga in a press conference shortly after the election results were announced on 9 March, noted that the election had been marred by massive and significant alleged failures of the biometric voter registration (BVR) kits, the electronic voter identification system generated by these kits, the results transmission or 'tallying' system and the results presentation system. In all, the petitioner's claim was that the manual tallying could not be relied on, and therefore the technical evidence of the IEBC needed to undergo scrutiny.
After the 2007 general election and the chaos that followed, the report by the Kriegler Commission urged Kenya came up with a new constitution that was promulgated on 27 August 2010 that detailed on how any future dispute concerning election will be solved. The major avenue of this was to set up Supreme court that would hear all issues regarding presidential election and make a ruling. Its decision is final.
The justices of the Supreme Court of Kenya would hear and determine the petition following the election, and any decision required a simple majority to pass. consisted of six justices at the time:
There were three petitions filed at the Supreme Court for determination:
All above cases were consolidated and heard at the same time.