Kenya is to hold another presidential election after the previous poll was declared invalid by the country’s supreme court.<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court Judges ruled by a majority of 4-2 that the win by President Uhuru Kenyatta was “null and void” as a result of irregularities committed by the election board and ordered a fresh ballot be held within 60 days.<\/p>\n
It is the first time in Kenya’s history an election result has been cancelled.<\/p>\n
The historic move comes after a petition was filed by opposition candidate Raila Odinga.<\/p>\n
He had claimed the electronic voting results were hacked into and rigged in favour of Mr Kenyatta.<\/p>\n
The Kenyan leader had won a second term on 8 August with 54% of the vote, but the court has now decided the poll was not conducted in line with the constitution.<\/p>\n
Judge David Maranga, announcing the verdict, said: “The declaration (of Kenyatta’s win) is invalid, null and void.<\/p>\n
“The first respondent (the election board) failed neglected or refused to conduct the presidential election in a manner consistent with the dictates of the constitution.”<\/p>\n
Mr Odinga said: “This is a historic day for the people of Kenya and by extension for the people of the continent of Africa.”<\/p>\n
The court’s decision paves the way for a new race for the presidency between Mr Kenyatta and Mr Odinga.<\/p>\n
Kenya’s main domestic poll monitoring organisation, ELOG, had previously said it found no evidence to suggest the election was manipulated or inaccurate.<\/p>\n
Mr Odinga has contested the last three elections and lost each time.<\/p>\n
On each occasion he has alleged the polls had been rigged.<\/p>\n
In 2013, the supreme court dismissed his petition.<\/p>\n
A number of people died last month after protests over the latest election result turned violent.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source:\u00a0newstalk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kenya is to hold another presidential election after the previous poll was declared invalid by the country’s supreme court. The Supreme Court Judges ruled by a majority of 4-2 that the win by President Uhuru Kenyatta was “null and void” as a result of irregularities committed by the election board and ordered a fresh ballot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107,11],"tags":[592,1613],"class_list":["post-349835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","category-top-stories","tag-kenya","tag-kenya-polls"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=349835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349835\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=349835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=349835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=349835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}