At least two people were killed in protests yesterday after Kenya’s Supreme Court upheld the result of last month’s disputed presidential election.

Authorities said that riot police had shot dead two opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) protesters in the capital Nairobi and Migori.

The court unanimously upheld President Uhuru Kenyatta’s re-election in the October 26 poll, which was called after the annulment of August’s election over ballot-rigging allegations.

ODM leader Raila Odinga, Mr Kenyatta’s presidential rival, said that the ruling had been “taken under duress.”

“We do not condemn the court, we sympathise with it,” he said.

“We … had repeatedly declared before this Supreme Court ruling today that we consider this government to be illegitimate and do not recognise it,” Mr Odinga stressed.

“This position has not been changed by the court ruling.”

The opposition leader called for calm from his followers — a group of whom were tear-gassed by police on Friday as they waited to welcome Mr Odinga back from an overseas trip.

Nevertheless, protests broke out following the ruling in ODM strongholds such as Kisumu.

“We will not respect (Kenyatta), even after the court verdict. That was not an election and we will continue opposing him,” said Kisumu resident Wycliffe Onyango.

Unrest over the weekend brought the death toll in the crisis close to 100, mostly ODM supporters shot by police.

It was Mr Odinga’s allegation of fraud that led to the Supreme Court’s cancellation of August’s election.

But the required quorum of judges failed to attend the day before the second election to hear an ODM motion to postpone the vote on the grounds that concerns over impartiality had not been addressed.

One judge was apparently scared off after her driver was shot and injured the day before that hearing.

An ODM boycott of the second vote meant turnout was less than half the near-80 per cent in August’s poll. Polling stations in strongholds of ODM support did not even open.

Mr Odinga is now asking for international intervention as protests continue. On Sunday, he said that Kenya “was being pushed to the precipice.”

The two presidential rivals are the sons of leading figures in Kenya’s struggle for independence from Britain — Western-backed Jomo Kenyatta, the country’s first president, and anti-imperialist vice president Oginga Odinga.