
ODM presidential candidate Raila Odinga votes at the Old Kibera Primary
School March 4, 2013. Mr Odinga has said he will challenge Mr Uhuru
Kenyatta's win in court March 9, 2013. ANN KAMONI
Daily Nation
Saturday, March 09, 2013
Presidential candidate Raila Odinga has said he will contest his challenger Uhuru Kenyatta's win in court.
Mr Odinga pointed to problems in tallying the
votes and urged his supporters to remain calm as he seeks relief from
the Supreme Court.
"Raila has no intention of conceding and will be challenging this in court," Mr Odinga's advisor Salim Lone told the Nation.
"The level of the failures in the system makes it
very difficult to believe it was a credible result, and if Uhuru is
declared president, Raila will go to court."
Mr Lone said that Mr Odinga would “very strongly ask people to stay calm” and wait for the courts to address his complaints.
Mr Kenyatta garnered 6,173,433 votes out of
12,338,667 total votes cast in the March 4 General Election. This
translates to 50.03 of the vote.
Mr Odinga came second after polling 5,340,546 which represents 43.28 per cent of the vote.
ODM's secretary general Anyang' Nyong'o told South Africa's Mail and Guardian Online
that the party would file a petition at the Supreme Court "because the
process has been awful and there's evidence to that effect".
On Thursday, the Coalition for Reforms and
Democracy (Cord) demanded a stop to the vote tallying saying its
integrity is "in question".
Kalonzo Musyoka, who was the running mate of Raila
Odinga, said the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC)
should take the blame for the flawed vote count.
"We as a coalition take the position that the
national vote tallying process lacks integrity and has to be stopped and
restarted using primary documents from the polling stations," said Mr
Musyoka.
He, however, told supporters to remain calm.
"This is not a call to mass action."
After the declaration of presidential results, the
Supreme Court has 14 days within which it is required to rule on any
petition challenging the results.