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| Winner: The technocratic incumbent, Mwai Kibaki, was sworn in again Sunday. Sayyid Azim/AP |
Kenya reelects Kibaki president amid controversy
Protests erupted Sunday after electoral officials announced that the incumbent won Thursday's vote.
By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the December 31, 2007 edition
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Nairobi, Kenya - After days of confusion and charges of vote tampering, Kenyan election officials expelled reporters and party observers from their headquarters and announced that incumbent President Mwai Kibaki was reelected.
The capital city, Nairobi, remained tense Sunday as paramilitary troops guarded the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) headquarters, where officials announced an end to tallying and pronounced Mr. Kibaki the winner of Thursday's vote with 4.584 million votes versus populist challenger Raila Odinga's 4.352 million votes.
The reaction in Mr. Odinga's areas of support, such as the western town of Kisumu, the coastal town of Mombasa, and the sprawling Nairobi slum of Kibera was immediate. Residents of Kericho, a stronghold of Odinga's Luo ethnic community, said that the streets had erupted into "chaos."
Within an hour of the announcement, Kibaki was sworn in, and Election Commissioner Samuel Kivuitu invited Odinga's supporters to pursue their allegations of vote tampering through the courts.
"This is a very sad day for Kenya and for democracy," says Njeri Kabeberi, a political analyst and head of the Institute for Multiparty Democracy in Nairobi. "We have created a recipe for something where we don't know what will happen. Kibaki's people will be celebrating, Odinga's people will be plotting, but the people of Kenya will have been watching TV to see what due process looks like and they will be losing faith in the process."
Lingering questions
Like the US presidential election of 2000, questions surrounding Thursday's vote may linger for weeks or months to come. But having held the most tightly contested election in Kenya's and perhaps Africa's history was an achievement of itself in a continent chock-full of one-party states.
The question now is whether Kenyans will accept a leader that fewer than half of Kenyans actually voted for and move on.
"I don't think that [Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement Party] will go to court, because the courts don't inspire much confidence," says Abdullah Ahmed Nasir, former chair of the Law Society of Kenya. "I think they will shift their focus to making this country ungovernable. They have 100 seats in parliament, against the president's 35 seats. This government will be a minority government, and they will not have an easy time ruling."
At his swearing in, Kibaki urged Kenyans to "set aside the passions that were excited by the electoral process and to work together as one people." He pledged to respect the right of Kenyans to choose a candidate, and said, "I will serve everyone equally, irrespective of who they voted for."
"We need to heal the differences created between ethnicities, religions, and regions," Kibaki said. "I call on Kenyans to set aside the divisiveness … and embrace one another as brother and sister."
Supporters of Kibaki say the technocratic leader has turned Kenya's stagnant economy into a regional power, with an average growth rate of 5 percent. But many of Kenya's poor – a large number of whom voted for Odinga on Thursday – say the benefits have not trickled down. Many blame Kenya's corruption, and Kibaki's anti-graft campaign has largely been seen as a failure.
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