Kenya Election Result Upheld.

Yesterday (30/3/13) Kenya's 7 member Supreme Court unanimously upheld the result of March 4th (4/3/13) Presidential election and declared Uhuru Kenyatta to be the winner. They immediately published a short version of their judgement that can be read here; http://allafrica.com/stories/201303300415.html

However the main points are;

1. The election was free and fair. However the Court is yet to provide a detailed explanation of how they came to that decision.

2. The result of the election is valid and therefore stands. However again the Court has offered no detail as to how it reached that conclusion.

3. The excluded ballots were rightfully excluded and therefore should not be counted. This is probably the most important part of the ruling because it sets a precedent for the clause in Kenya's new constitution that states elections should be decided on the ballots cast rather than the ballots counted. Obviously the Court has yet to offer any level of detail but the precedent they appear to be setting is that excluded ballots are not considered to be ballots cast. This seems to rather undermine the constitutional clause and seems to give a green light to future ballot rigging by providing a excuse for cast ballots to be excluded from the final count for even spurious reasons such as the ballots being cast in an area with 100% voter turnout.

4. The Court has no jurisdiction to amend the election result. Although this is technically true it strikes me as the Court trying to dodge its responsibilities. After all while it has no power to change the result it can most certainly order the Independent Election and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to alter the results if the Court finds problems with the way the IEBC has tallied the result.

The Supreme Court has promised to publish a full, detailed judgement within two weeks of Saturday which sets them a deadline of April 13th (13/4/13). I hope that judgement is forthcoming and does go into extensive detail. That's because as I've said before it is in the absence of official information that rumours start. Experience has taught us that in Kenya those rumours sometimes lead to violence. There has already been some evidence of this with 2 people killed and 11 injured in clashes between police and supporters of Raila Odinga in Kisumu. There were also clashes between protesters and police outside the Supreme Court building in Nairobi in which police fired tear gas although amid heavy rain these quickly broke up.

As I think I've already made perfectly clear I would have liked to have seen the Supreme Court rule that the margin of Kenyatta's victory was too narrow to be conclusive and order a run-off between Kenyatta and Odinga. That's because with such a narrow margin of victory, legitimate questions about the conduct of the election and now this rather murky ruling by the Supreme Court Uhuru Kenyatta will struggle to find anyone in the international community who considers him to be the legitimate President of Kenya. All of those problems would have been solved if he were to defeat Odinga in a run-off vote.

Kenyatta's credibility will be further diminished if the International Criminal Court (ICC) continue their prosecution of him over 2007's election violence. That's because while the matter is outstanding Kenyatta will be prevented from visiting any of the 139 nations that have signed up to the Rome Statute.

Finally although I think I'm already preaching to the converted I should again say that a load of Kenyans killing each other is going to do nothing to solve any of these problems.

16:30 on 31/3/13.