Former Chief Justice, Dr Willy Mutunga has opened up about the ruling in which a petition filed by Raila Odinga was dismissed by the Supreme Court in 2013.
Speaking in an interview with KBC on Tuesday, August 10, Mutunga recounted events leading to the dismissal of the presidential election petition filed by the then CORD presidential candidate.
The former CJ defended the ruling, noting that the apex court upheld Uhuru Kenyatta's victory because the court was unable to scrutinize results from all the polling stations.
He blamed the inability to go through all the results from the polling stations on the lengthy procedure that would have been required and time constraints.
"We wanted results from all the 33,400 polling stations scrutinized, for us to get a clear picture of whether there were malpractices and so forth,” Mutunga stated.
The scrutiny of the polling stations would reveal to the court whether or not there were malpractice in the elections.
He concluded saying that unfortunately, the process wasn’t finished and thus they couldn't use that evidence to overturn Uhuru’s victory.
Mutunga also regretted the attacks directed at him by a section of Kenyans, who thought that the final decision on the petition was solely his.
“Some Kenyans think I am the one who decided the ruling and not the other six judges. A section of the the CORD fraternity has never forgiven me,” he stated.
Mutunga stated that during his tenure, technology played a central role in enabling the administration of justice.
In addition, the judiciary received a financial boost from the Kibaki government which saw its budget allocation was increase from Ksh3 billion to Ksh17 billion.
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