COLLINS OMULO

William Ruto declared Kenya president-elect

Monday August 15 2022

Kenya’s Deputy President and presidential candidate for Kenya Kwanza alliance, William Ruto, during the launch of his manifesto in Nairobi on June 30, 2022. PHOTO | SILA KIPLAGAT | NMG

By The EastAfrican

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Kenya electoral agency, IEBC, chairman Wafula Chebukati has declared the winner of the closely-fought presidential election after calm was restored at the national tallying centre, which had erupted into chaos minutes earlier.

Read: Kenya polls agency split on presidential results

Mr Chebukati declared Kenya Kwanza's candidate William Ruto as president-elect and his running mate Rigathi Gachagua as the deputy president-elect, respectively.

Dr Ruto garnered 7,176,141 votes, representing 50.59 percent of valid votes cast, beating his rival Azimio la Umoja flagbearer Raila Odinga who had 6,942,930 votes.

“Despite intimidation and harassment…I have done my duty in accordance with the constitution and the laws of the land,” Mr Chebukati said before reading the votes each of the four presidential candidates got.

On Sunday, Dr Ruto, the outgoing deputy president and Mr Odinga, veteran opposition leader, had appealed for calm as the wait for the final results of the vote dragged on.

The declaration has been made without results from four of 290 constituencies --Kacheliba, Kitui Rural, Pokot South and Rongai-- whose voting was postponed.

Mr Chebukati also declared the August 9 election credible, free and fair.

Turnout was lower than expected at around 65 percent of Kenya's 22 million registered voters, with observers blaming disenchantment with the political elite in a country battling a severe cost of living crisis.

Read: Lowest turnout in 15 years as youth stay away

The announcement ceremony at the national tallying centre at the Bomas of Kenya in Nairobi was attended by diplomats and foreign election observers, who were whisked out when chaos erupted. The clergy was also present.

Polling day passed off largely peacefully, but memories of vote-rigging and deadly violence in 2007-08 and 2017 still haunt Kenyans.

The IEBC had faced sharp criticism for its handling of the August 2017 poll, which in a historic first for Africa, was annulled by the Supreme Court after Odinga challenged the outcome.

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Voters wait to cast their votes at a polling station in Nairobi on August 9, 2022.

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Kenya electoral agency split on presidential results

Monday August 15 2022

IEBC vice chairperson Juliana Cherera. PHOTO | NMG

By The EastAfrican

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Four commissioners of Kenya’s electoral agency, IEBC, have rejected the results of the presidential election yet to be announced by the chairperson on Monday.

The vice-chair of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, Juliana Cherera, made the announcement at Serena Hotel in Nairobi city centre, 14.5km from the national tallying centre at Bomas of Kenya in Karen, flanked by three other commissioners.

“We cannot take ownership of the results that will be announced because of the opaque nature of how the last phase has been handled,” Ms Cherera told journalists.

The commissioners, including Francis Wanderi, Irene Masit and Justus Nyang'aya allege that the results were arrived at in an opaque manner without giving further details.

The IEBC has seven commissioners led by Wafula Chebukati.

More follows

In the headlines

Uhuru’s economic legacy: big on promises, weak on delivery

Despite these grand plans, the government’s economic performance has been a mixed bag.

End of ethnic groupings in determining who becomes king?

Kenyans voted according to their socioeconomic interests and social justice.

Kenya poll: Schools reopening delayed a second time

Observers laud Kenya for increased number of women in polls

Rising child abuse cases in Tanzania force review of law

Kenya election: Clerics call for peace and calm

Somaliland says violent protests were 'foreign induced'

Ugandans, adopt e-mobility and Kenya polls will pass unnoticed

Monday August 15 2022

When Ugandans pray for a peaceful election in Kenya, it is less out of concern for fellow man and woman next door and more out of selfish interest. ILLUSTRATION | JOHN NYAGA | NMG

By JOACHIM BUWEMBO

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Every five years, Uganda develops breathing problems and its heartbeat becomes erratic as Kenya goes to the polls. But it doesn’t mean Ugandans have a preference between Raila Odinga and whoever he has been contesting against in the past, we don’t know how many, elections. The man on the Kampala street wouldn’t tell between William Ruto and Odinga if there were no names printed on their posters.

What scares the man on the street in Kampala is the possible disruption of transport not only between Uganda and Kenya but also internally in Uganda. For if fuel supplies are disrupted, transport in Uganda is badly affected and charges shoot up and even perishable foods like bananas and milk produced a few miles from the market become very expensive. So by the time the Kenyans went to the polls on Tuesday, Uganda’s body was already a nervous wreck.

So when Ugandans pray for a peaceful election in Kenya, it is less out of concern for fellow man and woman next door and more out of selfish interest. We don’t want our supply lines disrupted, and if Kenyans could fight themselves without some of them blocking roads and uprooting railway lines, we probably wouldn’t remember to petition God so fervently to grant our neighbours a peaceful, machete-free election.

Only God knows how much merchandise crosses the Kenya-Uganda border every day, as the dozens of passenger buses that cross the border in either direction every day are vital cargo vessels as well. For their chassis and engines were made for lorries. When they build them so high, it is not for giving passengers a touristic view of the East African landscape; it is for providing space to accommodate a few tonnes of goods between the wheels and the seats above.

So the spectre of a chaotic Kenya election this year, coming on top of skyrocketing fuel prices occasioned by the bizarre war in Europe hit us like, as our people would say, a boil growing on an elephantiasis-ridden organ. Caught in such a predicament, you cannot walk, let alone run. You have to devise different ways of locomotion. And that is what Uganda has done.

Away with fuel! That is becoming the rallying call of the government. Adopt electric mobility. E-mobility? Those are supposed to be things happening in the developed world; we hear of Tesla but have never touched it, let alone ridden in one. But it is neither science fiction nor fantasy. Already, a few hundred electric motorcycles are on the road doing boda boda business. How did they get here?

Like the biblical Immaculate Conception, the electric bikes were begotten not made. They are not miracles but are designed and made in Kampala using technology acquired from outside the country. Their innovators have, for a few years, been crying out for funding from disinterested financial institutions.

Last week, the Minister of Finance asked the Uganda Development Bank to consider financing them at the lowest possible interest rate in the market of eight per cent, down from the 17.5 publicly considered the lowest you can get a loan at in the country.

Nearly half of the passengers in the country are carried on boda boda. Although the electric bike costs 25 percent more than the petrol one of equivalent strength, it costs half what it takes to power and maintain the fuel one. So after a year on the road, the electric rider is happier and richer than the one who runs on petrol.

For its part, the government had invested in the production of bigger electric vehicles — buses which can carry 90 passengers while emitting zero carbon and giving the people on board the experience of travelling in the first world. Next on the government agenda is electrifying the railway — whatever new sections are built, the focus is to electrify them.

This time if the Ugandans have the discipline to see through the current dream of e-mobility, the 2027 Kenyan elections will pass unnoticed in Uganda.

Joachim Buwembo is a Kampala-based journalist. E-mail:[email protected]

In the headlines

Uhuru’s economic legacy: big on promises, weak on delivery

Despite these grand plans, the government’s economic performance has been a mixed bag.

End of ethnic groupings in determining who becomes king?

Kenyans voted according to their socioeconomic interests and social justice.

Kenya poll: Schools reopening delayed a second time

Observers laud Kenya for increased number of women in polls

Rising child abuse cases in Tanzania force review of law

Kenya election: Clerics call for peace and calm

Somaliland says violent protests were 'foreign induced'

The rule of law makes disputes over election results less scary

Monday August 15 2022

Kenyan Supreme Court judges, from left to right: Justice Njoki Ndung’u, Deputy Chief Justice Philomena Mwilu, Chief Justice David Maraga, Prof Jackton Ojwang and Justice Isaac Lenaola. PHOTO | JEFF ANGOTE | NATION

By Charles Onyango-Obbo

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As Kenya's August 9 approached, there were two very contradictory scenes at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA).

If you arrived on a late evening or early morning flight, you were likely to run into a stuffy arrivals immigration hall with more than 1,000 people — mostly foreign tourists — waiting hours to clear.

Outside, the queue of cars waiting to drop off people, many of them fearing likely violence during the election, was long too. Sections of the middle class usually flee African elections, fearing for the safety of their families — especially daughters and wives.

In the past, the once-illustrious Ugandan town of Jinja was taken over by Kenyan-Asian families, election refugees, waiting for the possible election uncertainties back home to blow over before returning.

This time, newspapers in Uganda reported more Kenyans entering the country to hedge against risks from the August 9 poll. There is nothing new there.

What is new here is the large numbers of foreigners visiting, unbothered by the prospect of ramping mobs angry that their candidate had been robbed at the ballot box.

Indeed, two days to the vote, seven-time Formula One champion Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton arrived in Kenya with his entourage from Namibia. Among other things, they were due to visit to take in the wildebeest migration in the Maasai Mara National Reserve.

It all tells of an emerging trend in other African countries. Partly due to the internet and social media, international knowledge of Africa and how its risks are evaluated have actually improved.

In much the same way few would have been deterred from visiting Los Angeles, California, in December 2020 because a pro-Donald Trump mob attacked the Capitol in an American version of a coup, the same distinction is increasingly being made about parts of Africa.

It also seems that the Covid-19 pandemic has altered how an increasing number of people in the north look at risk in the south.

A few restless "natives" burning tyres and clobbering each other with clubs over elections cannot be as scary as the virus.

However, for Kenya, the defining moment seems to have come in 2017. On September 1, 2017, the Kenya Supreme Court made history, overturning the re-election of President Uhuru Kenyatta. It was the first time a court nullified a presidential election in Africa.

The next day we had a dinner date at a popular Italian restaurant with former Chief Justice Willy Mutunga, cartoonists Godfrey Mwampembwa (Gado) and Paul Kelemba (Maddo), and other troublemakers.

We didn't book a table, reasoning that with many people staying away at home, afraid that the court ruling might spark violence, there would be many open tables.

I arrived first, and the place was chock-a-block with noisy, happy folks, mostly foreigners — the type that's supposed to fear politics-related violence. We waited for nearly 45 minutes to get a table.

It seemed then that the nullification of the presidential election had the opposite effect on them.

Rather than fear, it had suggested to them that, at some level, Kenya was a country of the rule of law. It made them feel safer.

President Kenyatta denounced the judges as "crooks". It turns out they were someone else's angels.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer, and curator of the "Wall of Great Africans". [email protected]

In the headlines

Uhuru’s economic legacy: big on promises, weak on delivery

Despite these grand plans, the government’s economic performance has been a mixed bag.

End of ethnic groupings in determining who becomes king?

Kenyans voted according to their socioeconomic interests and social justice.

Kenya poll: Schools reopening delayed a second time

Observers laud Kenya for increased number of women in polls

Rising child abuse cases in Tanzania force review of law

Kenya election: Clerics call for peace and calm

Somaliland says violent protests were 'foreign induced'

Kenya champions an ‘unAfrican’ openness in the electoral process

Sunday August 14 2022

Voters argue queue early in the morning to cast their ballots at a polling station at St Stephen School in the informal settlement of Mathare in Nairobi County, on August 9, 2022. The election was praised by observers as largely peaceful and open. PHOTO | AFP

By Charles Onyango-Obbo

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Watching the August 9 Kenya elections and the unfolding count, from the US, a commentator noted: “You gotta hand it to the Kenyans. This level of transparency must be a first in the history of presidential elections anywhere, ever. Yes?”

In East Africa, Africa, and indeed parts of the world, many were glued to Kenyan TV feeds and the unfolding drama online.

Next door in Uganda, a viral tweep quipped that “Kenyans are wondering why Ugandans are supporting their candidates more than they [themselves] do. They don’t know this is the only chance we have to freely support any candidate without being arrested.”

On social media, many red-eyed Ugandans were reporting having stayed up all night to watch the TV updates.

The unprecedented transparency came from a decision by Kenya’s Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to photograph all signed results sheets at every polling station and upload them all to its portal, with the media, political parties, and everyone free to download and tot up the numbers as they came along.

With that, they removed possibly up to 70 percent of the possibility of election rigging that happens in most of Africa, where vote figures are often brazenly tampered with along the way as they journey to the national tally in the capital. Yet, for all the transparency, old habits didn’t die. There were delays of delivery of voting kits to some counties, and elections in two counties (the equivalent to regional states) had to be postponed because the wrong materials were sent there.

After the voting, there were returning officers who vanished into the dark with results sheets, and in at some places a few miscreants were caught with pre-ticked ballot papers with the aim of stuffing the boxes. In the end, most polling got running, and the IEBC judged that the hitches were a tiny drop in the ocean.

The results of the new levels of electoral probity were almost immediately evident in the provisional results announced by the media. The two leading presidential contenders, Deputy President William Ruto and former Prime Minister Raila, ran neck and neck, with their numbers swinging wildly as they swapped positions, separated by a whisker.

Electoral graft

With turnout of over 60 percent -- a historic low -- analysts wondered whether there had been high levels of apathy, or the new transparency had only confirmed that the previous disputed elections were indeed stolen, and thus the high percentage had reflected the margin of electoral graft, rather than actual turn-up.

Going into Friday evening, it was still a toss-up as to who of them would take the prize. At tie-up that would send Kenya into uncharted territory looked likely, as functionaries of both candidates claimed victory, as an acrimonious final tally got underway, with both agents of both feuding over every form.

The Kenya constitution and election laws require one to win at least 25 percent of the vote in 24 of the 47 devolved counties, in addition to win 50 percent plus one of the valid votes cast.

The drama, though, kept many Africans riveted. There seemed to be agreement that Kenya had set a new threshold, and the events that played out live had to lead to some response in several countries, because other Africans seeing “unAfrican” electoral openness and fairhandedness previously thought to be impossible, had made a deep impression.

In Tanzania, where the ruling CCM routinely mugs the opposition at election, and where the less authoritarian President Samia Suluhu Hassan took power in 2020 after the abrupt death of her authoritarian predecessor John Magufuli, there was a lot of comment about the “Kenyan example” being witnessed, offering a model for the country’s troubled constitutional and electoral reform.

Ugandans mostly had a feast, using the Kenyan developments to mock the government of President Yoweri Museveni, in power for 36 years now, whose elections are usually marked by widespread crackdown of the opposition, violence, and internet and social media shutdowns.

At a big-picture level, there was something more profound.

There has been a serious ongoing exploration of what “democracy model” is best for Africa.

Until recently, the “development model,” was championed in Ethiopia by the late Meles Zenawi and in East Africa by President Paul Kagame and his ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front had a good run. Highly technocratic, limiting the chaotic and freewheeling – and sometimes highly ethnic – politics at the street level, hard on corruption, and heavily focused on delivering goods and services, was winning out.

Liberal democracy

The Western-style liberal democracy thrived too, but at its best, it was in the tiny island states like Mauritius and Seychelles, and in smaller countries on mainland Africa like Botswana and Namibia.

In the big African nations like Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa, liberal democracy was discredited by grand corruption, incompetence, a dominant ruling party that always manages to smother rivals at the vote, and the ethnic polarisation brought by cutthroat electoral competition.

For a while, too, the model in Uganda, of a quasi-one party dominated system, with strongman Museveni at the top, and an aggressively free market system, captured the imagination, but it became difficult to replicate elsewhere, and at home began to sink under patronage politics as Museveni’s rule grew long.

What happened in Kenya was different and new in that it went over the top, and weaponised electoral openness, at a time when Africa is facing a democracy crisis. By happy coincidence, it happened when the country moved to its first election, where the old ethnic and regional divides were blurred, and a class-based politics around the distribution of economic good and opportunities emerged. Those three factors, made the moment possible.

Now, these might be the enduring contribution of Ruto and his “hustlers”. And Raila’s (and outgoing President Uhuru Kenyatta), for putting a knife in the great Kenyan ethnic divide – that between the Kikuyu and Luo.

And for Africa, as the Raila election slogan went, “Inawezekana.” It’s possible. Both rivals won.

In the headlines

Uhuru’s economic legacy: big on promises, weak on delivery

Despite these grand plans, the government’s economic performance has been a mixed bag.

End of ethnic groupings in determining who becomes king?

Kenyans voted according to their socioeconomic interests and social justice.

Kenya poll: Schools reopening delayed a second time

Observers laud Kenya for increased number of women in polls

Rising child abuse cases in Tanzania force review of law

Kenya election: Clerics call for peace and calm

Somaliland says violent protests were 'foreign induced'

William Ruto declared Kenya president-elect

Monday August 15 2022

Kenya’s Deputy President and presidential candidate for Kenya Kwanza alliance, William Ruto, during the launch of his manifesto in Nairobi on June 30, 2022. PHOTO | SILA KIPLAGAT | NMG

By The EastAfrican

More by this Author

Read: Kenya polls agency split on presidential results

Mr Chebukati declared Kenya Kwanza's candidate William Ruto as president-elect and his running mate Rigathi Gachagua as the deputy president-elect, respectively.

Dr Ruto garnered 7,176,141 votes, representing 50.59 percent of valid votes cast, beating his rival Azimio la Umoja flagbearer Raila Odinga who had 6,942,930 votes.

On Sunday, Dr Ruto, the outgoing deputy president and Mr Odinga, veteran opposition leader, had appealed for calm as the wait for the final results of the vote dragged on.

The declaration has been made without results from four of 290 constituencies --Kacheliba, Kitui Rural, Pokot South and Rongai-- whose voting was postponed.

Mr Chebukati also declared the August 9 election credible, free and fair.

Read: Lowest turnout in 15 years as youth stay away

Polling day passed off largely peacefully, but memories of vote-rigging and deadly violence in 2007-08 and 2017 still haunt Kenyans.

The IEBC had faced sharp criticism for its handling of the August 2017 poll, which in a historic first for Africa, was annulled by the Supreme Court after Odinga challenged the outcome.

In the headlines

Uhuru’s economic legacy: big on promises, weak on delivery

Despite these grand plans, the government’s economic performance has been a mixed bag.

End of ethnic groupings in determining who becomes king?

Kenyans voted according to their socioeconomic interests and social justice.

Kenya poll: Schools reopening delayed a second time

Observers laud Kenya for increased number of women in polls

Rising child abuse cases in Tanzania force review of law

Kenya election: Clerics call for peace and calm

Somaliland says violent protests were 'foreign induced'

Kenya electoral agency split on presidential results

Monday August 15 2022

IEBC vice chairperson Juliana Cherera. PHOTO | NMG