Raila Odinga, runner-up in Kenya’s presidential elections, on Tuesday rejected the declaration of victory to his rival, current vice president William Ruto, and called the official result “a farce”.
The veteran opposition leader, who was running for office for the fifth time and had the support of President Uhuru Kenyatta, told a news conference that “what we saw yesterday [segunda-feira] it was a farce and a blatant disregard for the Constitution of Kenya” and said he would use “all legal options” possible to challenge the outcome. He has until next Monday to file a lawsuit with the Supreme Court.
On Monday, Ruto was declared the winner of the elections held on August 9, with 50.49% of the vote, by the chairman of the electoral commission, Wafula Chebutaki. The total difference was just 233,000 votes.
The announcement sparked a series of violent protests throughout the night, with Odinga supporters clashing with police and setting fire to tire barricades, mainly in the city of Kisumu and the capital, Nairobi.
The demonstrations raised fears that the riots that followed the 2007 presidential elections, when more than 1,200 people died in the country, could be repeated. Ten years later, new demonstrations in other elections left a toll of more than a hundred deaths.
On Tuesday, however, the streets were already quiet. Odinga urged his supporters to remain peaceful and “don’t let anyone try to take the law into their own hands.”
