Justice Ouko: Electoral credibility crucial to preventing 2027 tensions

Supreme Court Judge William Ouko/COURTESY Supreme Court Judge William Ouko has warned that Kenya’s electoral institutions must command public confidence ahead of the 2027 General Election to prevent presidential election disputes from spilling into political confrontation.

Justice Ouko said the country’s experience before the 2010 Constitution showed that when electoral grievances could not be resolved through credible, independent and timely institutions, disputes over political power risked threatening national stability.

He said the Supreme Court’s exclusive original jurisdiction over presidential election petitions was deliberately created to ensure that challenges to the presidential mandate are resolved through law rather than political contestation.

“The legitimacy of the outcome is ultimately determined through law rather than political contestation,” Justice Ouko said.

He was delivering a lecture titled ‘The Constitutional Architecture of Presidential Election Dispute Resolution in Kenya’ at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA).