Ghana’s 2020 petition pops up in Kenya’s 2022 presidential election petition

Kenya’s Supreme Court is hearing a presidential election petition challenging the victory of the president-elect and outgoing deputy president William Ruto.

Ruto and deputy president-elect Rigathi Gachagua are the main respondents along with the elections body, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, IEBC.

The petition, which is seeking to annul the August 15 election of Ruto, was brought by veteran opposition leader and one-time Prime Minister, Raila Odinga.

In making submissions on Thursday, September 1, 2022, the lead lawyer for the president-elect, Fred Ngatia, cited the case of Ghana’s presidential election of 2020 filed by former president John Dramani Mahama.

“Madam Chief Justice, barely two years ago, Ghana was in the same position that this court is in. They held their elections, a presidential candidate went to the Supreme Court, identical complaints were made, and complaint number one was ballot stuffing. Complaint number two, votes ought to have included rejected votes…complaint number three, chairlady, was not being fair to the losing candidate.

Ngatia identified that the case before Chief Justice Martha Koome and her colleagues was similar to the case in Ghana and similar cases in other jurisdictions.

“And what is now happening in this new space is that we are all getting the drafting skills of our colleagues in other jurisdictions. Dumping and staging, we learnt of it in America not too long ago, it is now before you.

“Ghana, two years ago had identical complaints to the complaints which are before you… Ghana considered all the evidence that was adduced and the Ghanaian Supreme Court came to this conclusion.

“That the work of a court in a contest of this kind is to look for a substantive truth… of the elections. That is the Ghanaian approach. If you are able to ascertain the substantive truth, the next important value is to get finality and stability,” he stressed.

William Ruto was on August 15 elected the fifth president of Kenya with 50.49% of the valid votes from the August 9 election, the IEBC announced.

He won his first run for the top job, beating former prime minister Raila Odinga who ran for the fifth time. Odinga got 48.5% of the vote.

The court is expected to deliver its final ruling on Monday, September 5, 2022.

At the end of Ghana’s 2020 election petition, the Justice Kwasi Anin Yeboah-led court unanimously dismissed the case brought by Mahama and affirmed the re-election of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.