Kenyans are waiting with bated breath for the official announcement of their next president, a tight race between Deputy President William Ruto and veteran politician and former prime minister Raila Odinga.
Although there have been a few glitches in Tuesday’s election, many have noted that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has been carrying out its duties and the atmosphere was peaceful and conducted well and efficiently, especially in comparison to the tumultuous vote in 2013 and 2017.
"The IEBC has been able to ensure that the transmission of results to the e-portal has been done in real time,” said political analyst and lawyer Elias Mutuma.
He is referring to the electronic transfer of vote tallies (form 34B) from the constituencies around the country to the central vote tally, located at Bomas Kenya in Nairobi.
“In 24 hours we were able to witness 90 percent of 34Bs being uploaded to the portal. That did not happen in 2017,” he told RFI from his office in Nairobi.
Anyone can look at the constituency polling totals online, as part of the the effort by the IEBC to make the process more transparent.
This new process stemmed from the problems with the presidential vote in 2017.
“There was a lot of anxiety back then as opposed to now. Everything is out there and everyone is able to look and come up with their own figures,” he said.
By Thursday early afternoon, the IEBC reported that 99.86 percent of electronic forms had been sent.
Constituencies have brought the paper version back to Bomas in order to compare the electronic form, and will only announce official results after the comparison has been verified by the IEBC.
Tally issues
But while the IEBC has made this available to everyone, there has been some confusion as Kenya’s rich media environment meant that each television station had their own tally.
Either Odinga or Ruto have won, depending on which TV station you are watching.
The Media Council of Kenya issued a statement on Wednesday after the election, noting concern regarding the different tallies.
“We remind Kenyans that the final results of the elections will be declared by the IEBC,” according to the statement.
Conceding the election for the first time
At their press conference regarding preliminary observations, regional observers from the East Africa Commission, Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), Intergovernmental Authority on Development for Eastern Africa (IGAD) and African Union all noted that overall the election had been peaceful, with very few pockets of violence.
"The elections were highly competitive and the campaign was comparatively more peaceful than previous elections,” said former Sierra Leone president Ernest Bai Koroma, head observer for the African Union and COMESA.
Kenyans went to vote for six representatives on Tuesday, including president, governor, senator, member of parliament, women’s representative, and county representative.
The IEBC has started announcing the results from the constituencies.
Some of the parliamentary, gubernatorial, and other representatives have begun to concede the election.
“We in the legal fraternities are fascinated by the move by politicians to concede defeat easily. That’s not something we’ve witnessed before in Kenya,” said Mutuma.
Cost
Lengthy and costly court cases by those where were defeated has been a hard lesson learned, he says.
“I believe we are maturing as we go by, and people are now willing to come to terms with defeat as an inevitable outcome of any election, that you only have one winner in each position.
"I think it’s quite commendable, and I look forward to the future where we have elections and people just agree, shake hands and we move on,” he added.
Koroma said that the absence of ethnic bloc voting also was a factor in lack of violence overall.
“There was a notable shift from president ethnocentric campaigns to issue-focused campaigns,” he said.
Mutuma says that this is the first election that has no tribal alignments.
“For the very first time, we’re witnessing a mix of ideas, a mix of interests, and we’ve been seen to make one step in diluting the tribal card in our politics, which is quite impressive,” he added.
There were a few pockets of violence. In one polling station, men broke ballot boxes and threatened the poll workers. Three have been arrested in conjunction with the violence, and voters in that polling station were authorized to vote on 10 August, the day after the vote, by the IEBC.
Additionally, in Bungoma, Western Kenya, two candidates fought on the day of the vote.
MP candidate Didmus Barasa allegedly shot his opponent’s aide, who died. The police are looking for him for questioning. Barasa reportedly won his seat.
Low turnout “a protest”
The IEBC noted that the voter turnout was low, between 56 and 64 percent, excluding those who were unable to vote via the biometric verification at the polls, and who had to be checked with the manual paper register.
In both 2013 and 2017 elections, the voter turnout was around 80 percent. This vote has been the lowest, but this wasn’t a surprise, says Mutuma.
“What this means is that as a population and as a country, people are not very happy with the leadership, people seem to be fed up,” he said This had a big impact on the low amount of youth who registered to vote.
Former Tanzanian president Jakaya Kikwete, the head observer for the East African Community, also noted the low voter turnout and lack of youths on election day.
However, Mutuma stressed that the apathy was not due to lack of voter education.
“The Kenyan population is quite educated, they know their rights, I can tell you for sure, the old mama in the village knows what they’re supposed to do the day of the vote," he said.
“It’s that people have made a decision not to vote because they’re not happy with the leadership. I think it’s a protest in itself by not voting,” he said.
The IEBC has until 16 August to announce the winner of the presidential election, but with paper tallies coming in to Bomas of Kenya, election watchers estimate the results will be officially announced either Friday or Saturday.
