Kenya In Tense Wait For Supreme Court Verdict On Election

Kenyans anxiously awaited a Supreme Court ruling Monday on petitions challenging the outcome of the August presidential election, with weeks of political uncertainty looming if the poll is annulled. Deputy President William Ruto was declared the winner of the tightly fought race, scraping to victory by a narrow margin

of less than two percentage points against Raila Odinga, a veteran opposition politician now backed by the ruling party. Odinga filed a petition to Kenya's top court last month alleging fraud in the vote tallying process and claiming he had "enough evidence" to show he had in fact won the August 9 election, which ranks as one

of Africa's most expensive polls. Although voting day passed off peacefully, the results sparked angry protests in some Odinga strongholds and there are fears a drawn-out dispute may deepen widespread economic malaise and lead to violence in a country with a history of post-poll unrest. "We have already wasted a lot of time

and money so if we go back to election we will waste (even more) time and resources," said Anne Karanja, a fruit seller in the capital Nairobi. "I voted but I feel like I can't vote again," she narrated echoing the frustration felt by many Kenyans. The court will examine whether any irregularities were substantial enough to nullify

the election, as was the case with the August 2017 presidential poll, which Odinga also challenged. Judges have spent the last two weeks rifling through boxes of evidence to figure out if the technology used by the election commission met the "standards of integrity, verifiability, security and transparency".