The East African nation has entered uncharted territory after the Supreme Court annulled the last presidential election. Questions abound about whether this vote will be any better.
On August 8, Kenyans went to the polls to choose a president. Eight candidates were in the running, but it was ostensibly a two-man race between the incumbent, Uhuru Kenyatta of the Jubilee Party of Kenya, and the main opposition leader, Raila Odinga of the National Super Alliance coalition.
Three days after the vote, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) by a margin of 1.4 million votes — 54 percent to Odinga’s 45 percent.
Turnout was put at just under 79 percent in an election that the commission described as “credible, fair and peaceful.”
However, even before the votes were counted, Odinga cried foul and his supporters took to the streets to protest. At least two dozen people have been killed in post-election violence, stirring memories of mayhem that erupted after the 2007 election, when more than 1,000 people were killed.
Odinga was not the only candidate to criticize the IEBC and question the vote tallies. Former Deputy Prime Minister Musalia Mudavadi also leveled accusations of electoral fraud.
Mudavadi claimed to have gathered “complete data” from the IEBC showing “the actual presidential election results contained in their database,” and concluded that there had been a “serious attempt to try and either doctor or alter the final results.” He said Odinga had won the election by almost 300,000 votes.
The Kenya Human Rights Commission also criticized election officials and pointed to several apparent irregularities at polling stations, calling the counting “opaque and the official numbers “not based on any verifiable results.”