Raila Odinga has moved to the Supreme Court to challenge the presidential results announced by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC).
Advocate Duncan Okach while speaking on Citizen TV explained in detail why Raila faces an uphill task of overturning the presidential results which gave William Ruto a win.
Okach said that the judges hearing the petition must be provided with proof from each of the 46,229 polling sites due to the breadth of the lawsuit.
He noted that it would be challenging for the court to review all of the materials in that time given that the petition must be decided within 14 days.
Okach added that the Supreme Court judges might not be in a position to recount the votes and declare a winner.
He said an acceptable verdict would be either to uphold Ruto’s victory or annul the election results and call for a fresh election like what happened in 2017.
The advocate however noted that there was transparency in the transmission of the results unlike in 2017 which will make it hard to annual the election.
“The issue of opening the server is no longer an issue because they are already there everyone had access to them. So it is a step in the right direction in terms of transparency that’s why I am saying for you now to overturn even this election you must now go farther than 2017 if you really believe you have grounds. Because in terms of mainly the servers that’s an issue that has been dealt with,” Okach said.
He further explained that the judges will consider if the disagreements between IEBC commissioners affected the numbers (presidential votes), stressing that their decision to uphold or nullify the election will entirely be based on the numbers.
“A lot will play out in terms of the IEBC itself how it processed these results, how it announced these results and the role of the other commissioners. Those are the main issues which would come out. But they would be juxtaposed with the fact that did they affect the numbers eventually? It’s all about numbers. If the numbers still match even if you impeach the process did not affect in any manner the ultimate will of the people, then the election will still be upheld of cause with some directions in terms of how to better manage it in the future,” Okach said.
