It’s a rare thing for a judge to become a folk hero, and rarer still for one to defy a president and overturn an election result – but that is what happened in Kenya last month. On 1 September, Chief Justice David Maraga – ascetic, God-fearing, 66 years old and with a perpetual look of mild amusement – declared President Uhuru Kenyatta’s 54 per cent victory in the August election to be “invalid, null and void”. The election commission was blamed for mishandling the presidential poll so badly (it was “neither transparent nor verifiable”) that it is scheduled to be run again on 26 October.
When Kenyatta won his first term in 2013, his opponent – then as now – was Raila Odinga, who alleged fraud and challenged the result at the supreme court. Odinga’s case was denied, confirming the public’s resigned expectation that the judiciary does the executive’s bidding. So when history failed to repeat itself this summer, there was shock on both sides and wild celebration on one.
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