President-elect William Ruto has asked the Supreme Court to dismiss Raila Odinga’s petition challenging the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission Chairman Wafula Chebukati’s declaration that he won the August 9 2022 Presidential race.
In his response to Raila’s petition and seven others challenging the election results on Friday, the Deputy President insisted that the election was legitimate and that he was duly elected President of the Republic of Kenya.
He accuses Raila of attempting to use the justice system to gain access to power, claiming that this is not the first time he has done so.
“I fervently believe…..that the Petition and the surrogate Petitions are a ruse for the 1st Petitioner’s (Raila) perennial strategy of fomenting a constitutional crisis in order to force the winner of a presidential election to enter into yet another “handshake” government,” he said in a retort filed by his lawyer Kithure Kindiki.
Ruto requests that the court investigate Raila’s previous participation in Presidential elections, claiming that the former Prime Minister has been reluctant to concede defeat in the past.
“The 1st Petitioner has filed a presidential election dispute before this Honourable Court for the third time in ten years.” According to him, “the 1st Petitioner has been involved in a series of shockingly similar acts in the last thirty years of consistently disputing presidential election results and fomenting national crises after losing.”
“The first distinct common feature that underpins the 1st Petitioner’s thirty-year pattern of strikingly similar acts following each presidential election is disingenuous disputation of presidential election results as a means of forcing the winner to share power through unconventional and extra-constitutional government arrangements popularly known as “handshake,” he told the Supreme Court.
Throughout all of the Presidential elections he has participated in, Ruto claims Raila has found fault with succeeding electoral agencies as well as pushed for the removal of their chairpersons, citing calls for the removal of previous bosses Samuel Kivuitu, Issack Hassan, and now Wafula Chebukati.
Ruto has called Odinga and other petitions opposing his ‘win’ a “story full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” and the controversies cited in the petitions “Much Ado about nothing.”
“I have specifically formed the impression that the 1st Petitioner has no genuine grievance against the conduct or result of the election but merely wants another bite at the cherry through a judicially forced re-run,” he said. Ruto maintains that it is against the public interest to keep the country in a perpetual electioneering mode, as Raila has done “during his thirty-year pattern of strikingly similar acts.”
According to the DP, Kenyans have already moved on from the electioneering euphoria, citing the “peace and calmness” that followed the announcement of the election results and the return to normalcy.
He has urged the Martha Koome-led Court not to be ‘duped’ into annulling the election or considering subjecting Kenyans to another presidential election.
“Returning the country to electioneering mode without compelling legal and factual justification would be too disruptive for our ailing economy and callous in the extreme,” he pleaded to the country’s highest court.
