Kenya’s chief prosecutor has ordered an investigation into the electoral commission over possible misconduct in last month’s annulled vote.<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court annulled the result of the 8 August poll after finding irregularities and declaring it “neither transparent or verifiable”.<\/p>\n
The electoral commission had declared incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta the winner by a margin of 1.4 million votes.<\/p>\n
A re-run, originally scheduled for 17 October, will be held on 26 October.<\/p>\n
Kenya’s Director of Public Prosecutions, Keriako Tobiko, asked the police and anti-corruption agency to investigate whether any electoral or criminal offences had been committed by members of the electoral commission.<\/p>\n
He asked investigators to examine allegations that two senior opposition officials had gained illegal access to the commission’s servers.<\/p>\n
Although no individual had been blamed, he added, this did not prevent the court from ordering an investigation.<\/p>\n
The electoral commission (the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission) had announced that Mr Kenyatta had won 54% against opposition leader Raila Odinga’s 44%.<\/p>\n
But Mr Odinga, of the National Super Alliance, went to court insisting that he had been cheated of victory.<\/p>\n
Supreme Court judges concluded that Mr Kenyatta’s re-election was “null and void” and took the unprecedented step of annulling the result on 1 September. They ordered a re-run within 60 days.<\/p>\n
The court’s\u00a0full judgment\u00a0accused the electoral commission of having failed to run a legal or constitutional poll.<\/p>\n
In response, the commission said it needed more time to address the issues that got the first vote annulled and it imposed a delay of nine days.<\/p>\n
Mr Odinga has said he will\u00a0not take part in new elections\u00a0unless members of the electoral commission are replaced.<\/p>\n
Mr Kenyatta has described the Supreme Court’s decision to annul the original poll as a “judicial coup” against the people.<\/p>\n
Observers fear that Kenya’s political temperature is rising, reviving fears of political violence.<\/p>\n
Around 1,200 people died in clashes after the disputed 2007 presidential vote.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kenya’s chief prosecutor has ordered an investigation into the electoral commission over possible misconduct in last month’s annulled vote. The Supreme Court annulled the result of the 8 August poll after finding irregularities and declaring it “neither transparent or verifiable”. The electoral commission had declared incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta the winner by a margin of 1.4 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":356686,"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],"tags":[593],"class_list":["post-356681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-kenya-election"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356681","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=356681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=356681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=356681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=356681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}