{{The election decision rendered by the Supreme Court is damaging to its credibility, a Kenyan activist and a US scholar declared at a forum held in Washington on Tuesday.}}<\/p>\n
Maina Kiai, head of a civil society organisation in Nairobi, and Joel Barkan, a US think tank expert on African governance issues, both suggested that the court should have ordered a runoff between Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga.<\/p>\n
The two commentators agreed that while Mr Kenyatta clearly won a larger share of the vote than Mr Odinga did on March 4, there was reason to suspect that Mr Kenyatta\u2019s actual tally did not exceed 50%.<\/p>\n
The court made a political decision\u201d in its ruling that a runoff was not required, Prof Barkan said. Calling its unanimous opinion \u201cvery shallow,\u201d Mr Barkan said \u201cthe court itself was the big loser\u201d and had \u201cessentially undermined its own authority, going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Kiai used similar language in criticising the court\u2019s performance, characterising its election ruling as \u201cone of the most shallow judgments I have ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs civil society,\u201d Mr Kiai added in his remarks at the National Endowment for Democracy, \u201cwe\u2019re not challenging the results \u2014 we\u2019re challenging the process. It\u2019s important to set the bar higher for future elections.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is \u201cno way we can change the fact that Uhuru Kenyatta is president of Kenya,\u201d Mr Kiai said.<\/p>\n
But he pointed to what he said were many small-scale manipulations of voting results that, taken together, enabled Mr Kenyatta\u2019s reported tally to exceed the 50% threshold.<\/p>\n
Prof Barkan did not offer as firm a conclusion in his assessment of the election results.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019ll ever know whether they won 50 percent plus one,\u201d he said in regard to Mr Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto. \u201cMy own sense is they did not, but they did win a plurality.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think the vote was stolen, but the election was a highly incompetent one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Kiai added that the focus should now be on how Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto respond in the coming months to the cases brought against them in The Hague.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ICC is the only game in town in terms of accountability,\u201d Mr Kiai said.<\/p>\n
Prof Barkan offered a different view, saying, \u201cThe ICC did itself a disservice\u201d in its handling of the Kenyatta\/Ruto cases. <\/p>\n
He cited lengthy delays in the court\u2019s process, suggesting that former Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo did not serve the court well.<\/p>\n
In considering where advocates of democracy in Kenya should place their attention, Prof Barkan said, \u201cI wouldn\u2019t focus so much on the ICC case. I would focus on whether Uhuru will stick to the very admirable markers he laid out in his inauguration speech.\u201d<\/p>\n
{NMG}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{The election decision rendered by the Supreme Court is damaging to its credibility, a Kenyan activist and a US scholar declared at a forum held in Washington on Tuesday.}} Maina Kiai, head of a civil society organisation in Nairobi, and Joel Barkan, a US think tank expert on African governance issues, both suggested that the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[99],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-7384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7384"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=7384"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=7384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}