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Kenyans are voting in a contentious presidential election rerun, boycotted by the country&#8217;s opposition leader Raila Odinga. Polls opened at 6am local time and will close at 5pm with more than 19 million voters registered to cast their vote.

Kenyans vote in election re-run, boycotted by opposition

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Following Chief Justice David Maraga&#8217;s historic ruling that nullified the 8th August Kenyan election, Kenyans are set to head to the polls again tomorrow for a re-run of the presidential poll.

Kenyans head to the polls again for election re-run

Jeremiah Ogonda Asaka | Middle Tennessee State University
Kenya’s 2017 general election has been one of the most litigated general elections since the country’s first multiparty poll in 1992.
Just weeks before Election Day the country’s Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) was still embroiled in court battles. In fact, days before the vote, it appeared in court at least twice.
In the first instance Kenya’s main opposition coalition – the National Super Alliance – alongside the Thirdway Alliance Party of Kenya challenged IEBC’s award of a ballot printing tender to Al Ghurair – a Dubai based firm.
The High Court of Kenya ruled for the plaintiffs effectively barring Al-Ghurair from printing the presidential ballot papers.
In its second appearance IEBC appealed the High Court ruling. This time the decision went its way. The Court of Appeal reversed the the lower court’s decision arguing that the election commission didn’t have time to find a new printer. The appeal’s court also ruled that the lower court should have barred Al-Ghurair from printing ballot papers for all elective seats and not just the presidential one.
After the second ruling, IEBC had the green light to print the ballot papers and conduct the general elections. Infamously, the presidential result was then invalidated by the Supreme Court triggering a fresh election slated for October 17, 2017.
The Supreme Court ruling was not just a victory for Kenyan democracy but for democracy everywhere. It underscored the independence of the judiciary, strength of public institutions, and Kenya’s deepening commitment to the rule of law. These lessons go well beyond Africa.
But despite the court’s decision, there are those who still maintain that President Uhuru Kenyatta won the election. The president himself was confident that he had garnered the most votes and he blasted the courtfor usurping the will of the Kenyan people, swearing to fix the problemin the Judiciary if he won the fresh election. His words were broadly interpreted as a direct attack on the judiciary.
Role of election observers questioned
Kenyatta’s remarks are at worst a direct attack on the judiciary and at best an indication that the Executive will interfere with judicial independence. That is a threat that Kenyan will have to contend with at home.
On the international stage, election observers are also facing a threat to their continued existence. The role and effectiveness of international election observation has been called into question after more than 400 observers gave the Kenyan election a clean bill of health. The Supreme Court decision has put them in a tight spot.
The Carter Center which sponsored the John Kerry-led observation team has praised the court decision as “both important and encouraging, because it highlights the independence of the Kenyan judiciary”, while trying to distance itself from any wrongdoing.
Media pundits across the continent and beyond have weighed in on the future of international election observation, some of them calling observer missions out for their formulaic rubber stamping of results. Whichever way one looks at it, the Supreme Court judgment is a stinging indictment on the international election observation enterprise.
Moving forward, election observer missions should address themselves to two key issues if they are to regain credibility. First, they must approach elections as a process rather than an event. In this way observer missions will be able to stagger their reporting to reflect the various phases of the electoral process.
In the Kenyan case for instance, observer mission would be expected to report separately on their findings. They would start by observing voter registration, voting, vote counting and tallying, before reporting on results transmission and verification process, and the announcement of results. A comprehensive report of findings would be made available once the election was over.
Second, observers must contend with the new African election reality that includes a strong information, communication and technology component. It is foolish to observe an electronic electoral process using the same approaches that were used to observe manual election.
Further compounding this issue for the observation industry is the fact that a number of African elections are now hybrids that integrate electronic and manual aspects. This is something that election observer missions must quickly come to terms with in order to update their mode of operation.
Next steps for Kenya
Kenya’s 2017 general election court rulings are significant in two ways. First, they highlight the functioning nature of Kenya’s democracy, which includes checks and balances. In this respect, the Judiciary has emerged as a strong, independent democratic institution. Second, the Supreme Court has to a large extent restored Kenyans’ confidence in their country’s judicial system.
Interesting times lie ahead for Kenya as it prepares for a fresh presidential poll now slated for October 17, 2017. The opposition alliance led by Raila Odinga has already demanded for the reconstitution of IEBCbefore the October poll.
On their part, Kenyatta, his deputy William Ruto and their Jubilee Party have vowed to ensure that the IEBC conducts the fresh poll as presently constituted. As things stand, Kenya still has a long road to travel before the current election dispute is resolved.
That notwithstanding, Kenyans have a date with destiny. The Supreme Court ruling has granted Kenyans another opportunity to decide the path their country will take. It is now anyone’s guess what the result of a fresh election will be. One thing is certain, though, the October 17 presidential election will have long lasting ramifications for Kenya’s maturing democracy.
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This article was first published in The Conversation.

Op-Ed: How will the Supreme Court’s historic ruling impact the country’s democracy

The president calls the chief justice a cheat. A lawmaker denounces the head of the opposition as the devil and says he needs a whipping. The opposition leader accuses the president of making a public speech while drunk.
The gloves are off as Kenya’s ruling party and the opposition battle for votes ahead of new elections, tentatively scheduled for Oct. 17 by the Supreme Court after it voided last month’s presidential results.
Last Friday’s historic decision, the first of its kind in Africa, was welcomed by many as a rare sign of independence from Kenya’s judiciary. It means voters will again have to choose between President Uhuru Kenyatta, 55, and veteran opposition leader Raila Odinga, 72.
But others feared that after a relatively peaceful election campaign, it could open the door to political instability, reviving memories of the violence that followed a disputed 2007 election when more than 1,200 people died.
Despite being prone to occasional unrest, Kenya is viewed by the United States and other allies as an anchor of stability in the region. East Africa’s richest country per capita and main trade route between the coast and the interior, it has avoided the civil wars that for decades plagued neighbours such as Somalia, South Sudan and Uganda.
“After the verdict by the Supreme Court &#8230; I‘m worried about the upsurge of hate discussion amongst Kenyans,” said Francis Ole Kaparo, the chair of the National Cohesion and Integration Commission, the government body in charge of preventing hate speech.
“As of yesterday morning we were investigating 273 cases of hate-mongering in the social media. I believe the number has probably doubled as we are sitting here,” he told a press conference.
They had less than a third of that number for the whole ten-week campaign period leading up to Aug. 8 elections, he said.
Lawmakers from both sides are under investigation. Opposition lawmaker Paul Ongili Owino, whose Twitter account suspended, is among them. Kaparo did not respond to a message seeking more details.
So is ruling party lawmaker Moses Kuria, who gave a fiery speech on Tuesday denouncing Odinga. Kuria is already facing hate speech charges brought by the commission more than a year ago.
<h3 data-reactid="55">FIERY SPEECHES</h3>
“Raila is a demon. He needs to be whipped by a man and whipped by a woman. Support us, including all parliamentarians, so we can hold him,” Kuria told cheering crowd in a speech in the Kikuyu language peppered with coarse words in Kiambu county on the outskirts of the capital.
“We went and gave birth to a baby (the election). That baby did not die during pregnancy or during delivery. The baby had started to suckle. Raila then came and stuck his finger in the baby’s arse and killed it,” he said during the speech, which was filmed and posted on YouTube.
Later, he posted on his Facebook page, “Manhunt is on tonight for the 200,000 people who did not vote and the 70,000 that voted for that other demon.”
The biggest worry in Kenya is violence taking on an ethnic dimension, as in 2007. President Kenyatta is from the largest of Kenya’s 44 tribes, the Kikuyu, while many of Odinga’s supporters believe his Luo ethnic group has been locked out of power.
Police denied reports, which were posted online and repeated by opposition politicians, that following Kuria’s speech buses had been stopped in the area and passengers questioned about their ethnicity. Reuters was unable to verify the accuracy of those reports.
Raphael Tuju, the secretary-general of the ruling Jubilee party, denounced Kuria’s speech to a local news channel hours after it was reported.
“That is completely out of order and I would not accept that kind of language. I will take it up with him because it is unacceptable,” he said. Tuju did not return calls from Reuters seeking comment on what disciplinary action Kuria might face.
Manoah Esipisu, a presidential spokesman, said “State House does not comment on comments by people like Moses Kuria.”
<h3 data-reactid="64">WAR OF WORDS</h3>
Kuria’s speech came days after Kenyatta repeatedly criticised the Supreme Court for nullifying the August election results.
Official results showed that Kenyatta had won by a comfortable margin of 1.4 million votes, but the court ordered the poll re-run because it said there were “irregularities” by the election board.
In a speech immediately after the ruling, Kenyatta said he disagreed with the ruling but would accept it. But in a public rally later he referred to the judges as “wakora,” a Kiswahili term for a cheat. The next day, Kenyatta promised to “fix” the judiciary.
Esipisu, the spokesman, said the president used the term wakora to criticise a judgement he views as subverting democracy. “Anything that doesn’t express the will of the people is wakora,” Esipisu said.
At another rally, Kenyatta told a crowd that Odinga was a “witchdoctor” because he was insisting on being consulted on the date of new elections.
Odinga told Reuters in an interview that the statements were unpresidential.
“When the anger settles, we should have a sober campaign without insults,” he said in an interview. “These campaigns will be fought on the basis of serious issues, not who can shout loudest, who can insult more than the other person.”
But later he couldn’t resist adding a personal dig at Kenyatta, saying that the president was probably drunk.
“It was irresponsible for the president to address the nation when he appeared to have taken one too many,” he said. “I think it is an insult to the nation.”
Asked about that comment, presidential spokesman Esipisu said: “We don’t comment on rubbish.”
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additional reporting by Humphrey Malalo and Maggie Fick; writing by Katharine Houreld; editing by Peter Graff
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Kenya election campaigns turn personal after court orders fresh polls

Jared Jeffery and Jacques Nel | NKC African Economics
On Monday, September 4, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) announced that the country will head back to the polls on October 17. However, National Super Alliance (Nasa) presidential candidate Raila Odinga has rejected the proposed date citing a lack of consultation.
Mr Odinga is reported as saying that the opposition wants its issues regarding the IEBC (the firing of its top six officials and an audit of the technology used in the election) to be addressed before a date is set.
Mr Odinga is quoted by Reuters as saying that he wants elections held on either October 24 or 31.
In addition, Nasa states that it plans to lodge 62 court cases contesting the results of governorship, legislative and member of county assembly (MCA) elections.
Thus, while we know that fresh elections must by law be held within 60 days of the historic September 1 Supreme Court ruling annulling the August election results, it remains unclear whether they will be on the date specified by the IEBC and who will organise and oversee them.
IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati on Tuesday, September 5, dismissed reports that the commission’s CEO, Ezra Chiloba, and other senior staff have been put on compulsory leave, but said that changes to the secretariat would be made before the election.
Furthermore, Mr Chebukati said that “the commission is revising the operational and procedural requirements for the conduct of the fresh elections,” adding that those changes will be expedited once the commission gets the full judgment of the Supreme Court.
That, however, may only be towards the end of September (the court must make its full judgement available by September 21), which would leave the commission with little time to institute the necessary changes.
Mr Chebukati himself has refused to step down which will not help improve the credibility of the commission.
Assuming the elections go ahead in October as planned, what are the possible political and economic implications we can expect?
The next two months are going to be turbulent as both parties kick campaigning into high gear once again.
The run up to the August election was for the most part more peaceful than the 2013 poll (the gruesome murder of IEBC employee Chris Msando notwithstanding). Protests and riots in the six months prior to the election averaged 20 per month compared to 24 per month for the six months before 2013’s poll, according to the Armed Conflict Location &amp; Event Data Project (Acled).
But protests and riots in the lead up to an election are not necessarily a good predictor of what to expect thereafter. In 2007, there were only 24 protests and riots in total in the six months leading up to those controversial polls, but the violence that followed the announcement of results claimed around 1,113 lives and left hundreds of thousands displaced.
The fallout from the disputed results of the August 8 election was more violent than we had expected. Although there were fewer recorded protests and riots than in 2013 (31 in August 2017 compared to 34 in March 2013), the number of fatalities attributed to post-election unrest so far this year was significantly higher (Human Rights Watch puts the figure at 24 but said that this was likely an underestimate, while Acled data states as many as 45 lives were lost).
The police have yet to be officially censured and there are calls for the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) to investigate, but with 60 days until the next election, there is not much time to have any effect on policing culture. The official commission of inquiry into the 2007/08 post-election violence attributed 405 of the 1,113 deaths to the police.
Tensions may increase ahead of the October polls, but the real danger will come once the results are announced – whichever way they go.
With regard to the expected result of the re-run election, we still believe that President Uhuru Kenyatta is the favourite to win.
Prior to the August 8 poll, we had forecast that he would win with around 52.3% of the total vote (the annulled results showed that he received 54.3%).
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The main factor to watch remains turnout. As can be seen in the graph, Mr Kenyatta’s Jubilee Party is dominant in the country’s most vote-rich regions.
If turnout is higher in October than in August, as we suspect it will be, the likelihood of the incumbent retaining his place will also be higher. We had anticipated a turnout of 78.6% ahead of the August 8 poll (compared to 84.9% in 2013), and the IEBC’s annulled results showed a turnout slightly lower at 77.5%.
The annulled results, while in line with our forecasts, did show some surprises. We had expected Mr Odinga to do better in Nairobi and for turnout in the Rift Valley and North Eastern regions to be higher (which would have favoured Mr Kenyatta).
Of course, there is still a chance that Mr Odinga could win the presidential election. If this were to occur and there were no re-runs of elections for parliamentary seats, it would mean that he would be president while the Jubilee Party had a significant majority in the National Assembly.
This would in all likelihood lead to his policies being stonewalled – effectively making him a lame duck president – and would have serious implications for economic growth.
Turning to implications for the economy, our next forecasting round is only at the end of October so we do not have any new figures at the moment, but we have narrowed down the possible impact on our forecasts.
Arguably the biggest risk relates to the country’s fiscal position. The 2017/18 budget has allocated just under $400m towards the IEBC for election-related expenditure, but some estimates put the actual cost of the election at around $500m.
It should be noted that a large proportion of this spending would have been once-off purchases that will not have to be repeated, and donors would have also footed a proportion of the bill – and we can expect external donors to remain engaged for the October elections given the positive light in which the Supreme Court’s decision has been received, at least from an institutional perspective.
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Still, the amounts involved do raise some concern, particularly when considering Kenya’s already precarious fiscal position.
However, precisely because of this precarious fiscal position, we expect Kenyan authorities to keep a firm grip on any unplanned spending in order to contain risk perceptions. The IMF has continued its unwavering support for Kenya despite the country’s disappointing fiscal consolidation track record, but the Kenyan authorities would not want to push their luck in this regard.
Also, every major rating agency identifies Kenya’s fiscal position as risk negative, and Kenyan authorities will need to ensure that these perceptions do not deteriorate going forward. Consequently, we do not expect any significant difference to the country’s fiscal forecasts.
One important channel through which we do expect the re-run of the election to have an impact on our forecasts is on external balances.
It was quite telling how quickly regional traders (particularly Ugandans) were willing (and able) to channel external trade through Tanzania at the expense of Kenya due to fears of trade disruptions during the election period.
Given that this period is now being extended, we can expect more trade to be directed away from Kenya – re-exports has become an increasingly important trade category in Kenya.
In addition, the uncertainty created by the political environment will also have a negative impact on tourism, which will reduce services receipts. The overall impact on external balances will be notable but won’t have a material impact on external risks.
With regard to GDP growth, the re-run is expected to have a marginal negative impact.
This will primarily be through the impact on risk perceptions, with both domestic and external investors adopting a wait-and-see approach.
Foreign direct investment (FDI) dropped from just under $600m in 2015 to just over $300m last year. Our previous forecasts incorporated a notable rebound in FDI this year, but these figures will be adjusted to show relatively stable FDI in 2017.
Furthermore, the negative impact on GDP growth in 2017 will be largely offset by a slight improvement in 2018 growth as insecurity perceptions subside.
There is still a lot of uncertainty regarding the October re-run elections. We do not know what changes will need to be made to the IEBC and whether they will have time to implement them. We do not know whether other elections (legislative, governorship and MCA) will also be re-run. And we certainly do not know whether candidates are going to call for calm in order to avoid further violence.
What we can perhaps be more sure of is that Kenyans will be more motivated to vote when elections do occur – meaning voter turnout would be higher which would boost Mr Kenyatta’s chances of re-election.
If legislative elections are not re-run and Mr Odinga pulls off a surprise win, we can be sure that a Jubilee-dominated Parliament would make policy making very difficult for him and this would have negative consequences for the economy.
We can expect the economy to suffer over the short term due to these multiple uncertainties and the country’s already-precarious fiscal position could be negatively affected.
There was euphoria in many quarters when the Supreme Court made its historic ruling. The institution’s independence is positive and the precedent set will hopefully lead to better elections going forward. However, the ruling has not been without its costs.

Kenya – Implications of fresh elections

Kenya&#8217;s main stock index rose 2.51 percent on Monday to a 14-month high, building on gains last week as investors welcomed the re-election of President Uhuru Kenyatta.
The NSE-20 index has risen nearly 7 percent since the election last Tuesday. Kenyatta was declared winner by a clear margin on Friday but his main challenger, Raila Odinga, has not yet conceded.
At least 24 people have been killed in pockets of protests against the outcome of the vote, mainly in two Nairobi slums. But businesses re-opened on Monday, shrugging off a boycott call by Odinga.
A dispute after an election in 2007, which Odinga also lost, sparked widescale protests and violence that killed 1,200 people and hammered the economy.
Aly Khan Satchu, an independent trader and analyst in Nairobi, said the market worried that Odinga, who identifies himself as a social democrat, would have changed the economy&#8217;s course.
&#8220;The markets were concerned around a leftist &#8216;Magufuli&#8217;-like tilt which would have eroded Kenya&#8217;s hard won free market credentials. So part of this rally is a relief rally,&#8221; he told Reuters, referring to President John Magufuli of neighbouring Tanzania.
Kenyatta, the 55-year-old son of the country&#8217;s founding president, engaged regularly with the business community in his first term to try to boost economic growth and job creation. His family also owns a range of businesses.
The Kenyan shilling firmed on Monday to touch an intra-day high of 103.65 per dollar, from 104 before the election, while Kenyan dollar bonds have also rallied after the election.
Monday&#8217;s gains by the blue chip index were led by electricity distributor Kenya Power, which was up 9 percent and lender KCB Group, which was up 8 percent.
Ken Minjire, the head of securities at Genghis Capital, said investors had been encouraged by endorsements of the election by various foreign observer groups. The main local observer group also said the official result was in line with their tally.
&#8220;The international investors are more or less confident,&#8221; he said.
Kenyan shares had slightly lagged this year&#8217;s gains in other African bourses like Nigeria as investors waited to see how the election would go, market participants said.
&#8220;This means there is a tonne of liquidity that is set to enter the market and underpin valuations,&#8221; Satchu said.
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Editing by David Lewis and Toby Chopra
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Kenya’s stock market hits 14-month high after Kenyatta victory

Sekou Toure Otondi | University of Nairobi
As Kenya’s general election beckons the race has effectively narrowed down to two horses. Either, opposition leader Raila Odinga , or incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta will be Kenya’s president after August 8.
The bid for State House has attracted eight presidential contenders in total. But in recent weeks the focus has shifted to Odinga’s National Super Alliance and Kenyatta’s Jubilee Party, both of which have recently unveiled their manifestos.
While the manifestos look good on paper, depending on one’s political leaning, they are unlikely to have a significant impact on how Kenyans will cast their votes. The majority of the electorate have already decided on their preferred candidate. Most will vote on the basis of their tribal affiliations. The latest polling by Infotrak shows that only 8% of Kenyans are undecided on which presidential aspirant to vote for.
Despite the fact that party manifestos will not shift voting patterns, they do provide a policy snapshot of what the parties would prioritise were they to form the next government.
The fact that neither the Jubilee Party nor the National Super Alliance manifesto takes much account of relations between Kenya and its peers in the East African Community, is noteworthy. And disturbing.
A study of the two manifestos shows that neither has a coherent plan for regional integration. This should concern Kenyans, as well as the country’s neighbours.
Relations between Kenya and its neighbours aren’t as they could be. A few months ago cabinet secretary for foreign affairs Amina Mohamed accused Kenya’s neighbours of not backing her candidature for the chairmanship of the African Union commission. Uganda openly disputed the claims, which only served to bring more attention to the suspicions.
More concerning are the increasingly unpredictable relations between Kenya and Tanzania. Even as the campaign heats up a diplomatic row is raging between the two countries.
Tanzania and Kenya are key actors in the EAC integration process. According to the 2016 Kenya economic report, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda account for the largest intra-trade volumes within the EAC sub-region.
Therefore, Tanzania’s protectionist tendencies, which include both tariff and non-tariff barriers, not only threaten free trade within the community, but also encourage other states to place their own national interests before those of the union.
Tanzania’s overt nationalism is likely to stymie the integration process. Thus the need for Kenya and Tanzania to quietly resolve their differences before they escalate into an open diplomatic row.
<h2>Fractious regional relations</h2>
There have long been cracks in East Africa’s fledgling union.
Since the 2013 general election that ushered in the Jubilee administration, Kenya’s engagement in the community has become increasingly low key. The result was the formation of an informal coalition of the willing, which included Rwanda, Uganda, and Kenya. It’s goal was the fast-tracking of regional integration through large scale regional infrastructure projects. These countries came together in reaction to Tanzania’s lukewarm approach to community affairs. At the time the informal coalition was formed, Tanzania was under the leadership of President Jakaya Kikwete.
Following the election of President John Pombe Magufuli in 2015, Kenya’s engagement with Tanzania has slackened even further. The cold relations between the two countries is partially explained by the diplomatic charm offensive that Magufuli launched to restore Tanzania’s influence in the region. His efforts scuttled the coalition of the willing and sidelined Kenya within the bloc.
A potent and noxious mix of competing interests have aggravated the frosty relationship between Kenya and Tanzania. There is stiff competition between the two countries to host large scale regional projects. There have also been disagreements over trade deals.
The standoff is threatening the integration process because the other community members are finding that they have to align themselves with either Kenya or Tanzania. This is getting in the way of joint decision making.
A highlight of the competing views in the region surfaced during the signing of the European Union/East African Community economic partnership agreement when Kenya and Tanzania once again took opposing views.
Tanzania has always opposed the trade deal on the grounds that it was contrary to its national economic interest. Kenya’s view is that Tanzania wants to scuttle the economic progress of the east African bloc.
<h2>Tensions fuelled by elections</h2>
Differing points of view between political elites in the region have also contributed to dampened community relations. Whenever one of the member states goes into an election, other community leaders will align with either the opposition or the incumbent. These alignments are usually based on personal relationships rather than common ideology.
Forming alignments based on a shared ideology would indicate that the integration process was on course. More so because the East African Community’s ultimate objective is to form a political union and a shared ideology would go a long way to that end. But, instead of staking cross-border political support on ideology or regional policy frameworks, support continues to be pegged on personal relationships.
This is detrimental to the integration process. In 1977, the first East African Community suffered a similar fate when it collapsed under the burden of personal differences between leaders in the bloc.
Nevertheless, the political goodwill of individual elites in community governments cannot be gainsaid. Politicians will always be at the centre of the policy that governs the integration process.
It’s on this basis that I argue for the inclusion of more detailed East African Community-related policy in the manifestos of Kenya’s main political outfits. Whoever forms the next government needs to factor in the big matter of community integration.

Op-Ed: Why it  matters that regional integration has taken a back seat in Kenya’s election

Party primaries ahead of the August elections have been disrupted due to poor preparation, accusations of rigging and violence. Both the ruling Jubilee Party (JPK) and the main opposition party in the National Super Alliance (Nasa), the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), have been affected.
The results of JPK’s primaries held on Friday, April 21, were annulled due to the chaos caused by logistical delays and under-preparedness (President Uhuru Kenyatta emphasised that they were under-prepared rather than unprepared in a desperate attempt to save face).
The ODM’s primaries, meanwhile, were also characterised by poor planning and incidents of violence – particularly in its strongholds (such as Homa Bay, Migori, Kisii, Kwale and Busia, among others).
Parties have until May 1 to conclude their nomination processes. This delay puts further pressure on the electoral commission which is already struggling to keep to its preparation schedule.
The fear, as in 2013, is that the violence displayed portends further violence in August, but this does not necessarily follow.
Primaries in 2013 were also characterised by poor planning and violence and the same fear arose; however, the January primaries of that year were the high point for conflict and the elections passed in relative peace.
The chaos was largely expected at the most recent primaries. JPK had asked the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to conduct its primaries in order to ensure that they went smoothly and were accepted by aspirants to be free and fair (critics claimed that they also just wanted the government to foot the bill).
The opposition protested that taxpayer money should not be used for party primaries and threatened to oppose the idea in court. Their critics, meanwhile, said that opposition parties just wanted to use the primaries to raise money off of aspirants and as a way for the leaders within the party to manipulate the outcomes.
It is interesting to note that in 2013 the Wiper Democratic Movement (part of Nasa) had supported the idea of the IEBC conducting party primaries.
“All political parties will agree with me that going forward, we will have to have better ways of nominations and my observation is that they be IEBC-led because the polls body is the only institution that has the wherewithal to conduct the exercise,” Wiper Party Leader Kalonzo Musyoka said in January 2013.
In the end, the IEBC stated that it already has enough on its plate with the task of organising the general elections. Hopefully the chaos of the primaries will cause them to double their efforts to ensure that August’s polls go off without a hitch.
Next time calls for the IEBC to be involved may have more support.
<img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-121190" src="http://cnbc.africa/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Protest_Riots-Graph-300x200.png" alt="" width="300" height="200" /> <img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-121243" src="http://cnbc.africa/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Violence_Civilians-Graph-300x200.png" alt="" width="300" height="200" />
As we can see from the graphs, conflict during the 2013 election season peaked around the primaries and then tapered off significantly. It is likely that this year will see the same pattern.
Levels of protests and riots, as recorded by the Armed Conflict Location &amp; Event Data Project (Acled), are much the same as they were in 2013 while the data on violence against civilians (by government security forces) indicates that tensions are markedly lower this time around.
Obviously, the 2013 elections were significantly tenser due to them being the first elections since the 2007/08 violence that killed over 1,200 people and caused hundreds of thousands to be displaced.
Are the fears of significant violence and instability warranted?
Analysis of the 2013 elections by Nic Cheeseman, Gabrielle Lynch and Justin Willis identified four reasons why the polls were more peaceful than previous ones: 1) the alliance between Mr Kenyatta and William Ruto (now deputy president) defused ethnic tensions between Kikuyus and Kalenjin’s (the main groups involved in the 2007/08 violence), 2) a pervasive peace narrative carried by all main contenders and the media, 3) democratic reforms instituted after the adoption of a new constitution, and 4) devolution and the creation of 47 new counties which allowed the opposition to win locally even though it lost nationally.
As these factors are still largely in play in the current situation, we can perhaps expect a similar level of conflict to characterise this election.
However, there are obviously new factors to consider.
The peace narrative is not as strong this time around – although Mr Kenyatta has lately been calling for cool heads to prevail – and rising inflation and food scarcity due to the drought has affected many.
Meanwhile, questions over the IEBC and the electoral process have been raised by the opposition, which raises the risk of challenges to the results.
Should Nasa break up before the election, this could bring new reasons to worry.
Dynamics in the Rift Valley, where Isaac Ruto of the Chama Cha Mashinani (CCM) party has joined Nasa, also need to be watched. Both he and Deputy President Ruto (no relation) have one eye on the 2022 election (along with Gideon Moi of the Kenya African National Union, Kanu) and this could see the fight for the Kalenjin vote turn violent.
On the positive side (with regard to risk) the opposition is in disarray and a JPK win in the presidential race would surprise few – meaning challenges to the result will not hold much sway and this could reduce the chances of post-election violence.
The chaotic primaries, then, do not necessarily portend violence in August. The factors that made 2013 far more peaceful than 2007/08 (not to mention elections in the early 1990s) are still largely in play.
New dynamics are ambiguous, with some likely to increase tensions (such as those in the Rift Valley) while others could further decrease the likelihood of violence (such as the slow start to the Nasa campaign and widely held expectations of a Jubilee win).
What we have learnt from the chaotic primaries is that there may in future be more support for the IEBC conducting them (which would add to the costs of elections for the government) and party politics in Kenya remains under-developed (Mr Kenyatta would perhaps prefer that description).
The effects of devolution are also once again evident, but while they may have helped spur the establishing of JPK as a national party, they have not brought about a similar national opposition party.
This may only occur in 2022 – which should be a more interesting election altogether.
Nasa is scheduled to announce its presidential candidate on April 27. It is expected that Raila Odinga (ODM) will once again be put forward with Kalonzo Musyoka (Wiper Party) as his running mate.

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