Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Kenya Election Update

It appears that the incumbent, Uhuru Kenyatta, has won provisional results with about a ten point lead over his opponent Raila Odinga. 97% of the polling districts have reported. https://www.yahoo.com/news/kenya-opposition-leader-rejects-poll-results-showing-presidential-010225221.html
Before the election people were stockpiling food and drinking water, in anticipation that services might be interrupted.
It is a good news, bad news scenario.  So far there hasn't been the violence which happened after the 2007 election, which left over 1000 people dead, and hundreds of thousands displaced.  However, there has been sporadic and regional violence, and four people are dead.  Odinga is crying fraud and saying that he won't accept the results.  He has run three times, but has never won.
Tribalism is blamed for the violence. However that is an oversimplification.  Among the issues are unemployment, inequality, and corruption.  Kenyatta won points for his infrastructure programs. But people say that government jobs are disproportionately awarded to members of his ethnic group. There is high unemployment.  However Kenyatta is perceived to be better for economic stability, and has made some progress in rooting out corruption.
Prior to the election, former US President Obama, whose father was Kenyan, made a plea for peaceful polling, and urged respect for the outcome of the election. http://www.thepremiernews.com/2017/08/08/un-obamas-plea-polls-kenya/

1 comment:

  1. Odinga has been raising questions/charges/suspicions that the election was hacked. Suppose we will hear that after every election until some consensus is found on preventing it. Not much chance of consensus happening while the pudgy president of the USA is claiming there is no hacking, only sour grapes from Hillary. So expect every election to end in hack charges. As the enabler might say, sad.

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