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<p>As Kenyans took to the polls today, some opposition strongholds like Kisumu witnessed violence as opposition supporters clashed with police and threw up burning barricades to challenge the legitimacy of the poll.</p>


Kenyan election: How credible and legitimate is the re-run?

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<p>Kenya today went to the polls with reports of some polling station officials not turning up to their stations fearing they could face intimidation for taking part in the election.</p>


Low turnout in Kenya’s election re-run

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<p>Presidential election re-run is underway in Kenya with supporters of opposition leader Raila Odinga staying away from the vote. Joining CNBC Africa for more is Elvis Abenga, Advocate of the High Court.</p>


Legitimacy of Kenya’s election re-run questioned

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<p>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.</p>


Kenyans vote in election re-run, boycotted by opposition

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<p>Kenya plunged deeper into crisis today as a shortage of judges undid a petition to delay the presidential election.</p>


Political uncertainty threatens Kenya’s economy

<p>Kenyan police sealed off the Supreme Court building in the capital on Wednesday as judges prepared to hear a petition to delay this week’s presidential election, a re-run of an August vote that was nullified by the same court.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-287429 size-full" src="http://cnbc.africa/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Kenya_flag_Wikemedia.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="600" /></p>
<p data-reactid="40">Streets around the court in downtown Nairobi were blocked by police barriers and officers in anti-riot gear.</p>
<p data-reactid="41">The court, created by a 2010 constitution that followed a violent political crisis three years earlier, is due to hear several cases challenging the legality of Thursday’s election, which is being boycotted by opposition leader Raila Odinga.</p>
<p data-reactid="42">President Uhuru Kenyatta, who won the August election before it was annulled due to procedural irregularities, has made clear he wants the vote to go ahead although some in his party fear Odinga’s boycott will undermine the credibility of any victory.</p>
<p data-reactid="43">One petition, brought by prominent human rights activist Khelef Khalifa, is calling for a delay in the vote on grounds that the election board is not sufficiently prepared.</p>
<p data-reactid="44">Around 1,200 people were killed in ethnic clashes after the disputed election in 2007. Since the August vote, nearly 50 people have been killed in political unrest, almost all of them at the hands of the police.</p>
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<p class="Attribution_content_27_rw" data-reactid="46">Reporting by George Obulutsa; Editing by Ed Cropley</p>
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Kenyan police seal off Supreme Court ahead of vote delay hearing

<p data-reactid="32">Kenyan prosecutors will charge the sister of opposition leader Raila Odinga and opposition senator Fred Outa with incitement to violence and other crimes after attacks on staff of the election board last week, the chief prosecutor’s office said on Monday.</p>
<div id="attachment_282846" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-282846" class="wp-image-282846 size-full" src="http://cnbc.africa/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/1571595826001_5560783766001_5560776180001-vs.jpeg" alt="" width="1024" height="576" /><p id="caption-attachment-282846" class="wp-caption-text">Raila Odinga speaks out as Kenya court nullifies president&#8217;s election win.</p></div>
<p data-reactid="33">Odinga has been due to compete against incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta in a repeat presidential election on Oct. 26, but pulled out earlier this month, saying the polls would not be free and fair and calling for a boycott of the vote.</p>
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<p class="Attribution_content_27_rw" data-reactid="35">reporting by Duncan Miriri; writing by Katharine Houreld; editing by John Stonestreet</p>
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Kenya to charge opposition leader’s sister with incitement to violence

<p data-reactid="35">A top Kenyan election commissioner has quit and fled the country a week before a re-run of the presidential vote, citing political intimidation and saying the election would be a “mockery” of democracy.</p>
<p data-reactid="35"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-287429 size-full" src="http://cnbc.africa/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Kenya_flag_Wikemedia.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="600" /></p>
<p data-reactid="36">The resignation of Roselyn Akombe, one of seven election board commissioners, is likely to be seized upon by the opposition to bolster its claim that the Oct. 26 poll will not be fair.</p>
<p data-reactid="37">The re-run was ordered by the Supreme Court on Sept. 1 after it nullified the Aug. 8 re-election of President Uhuru Kenyatta, following a petition by opposition leader Raila Odinga.</p>
<p data-reactid="39">Odinga withdrew from the repeat poll last week, saying the election board had not carried out reforms demanded by the opposition.</p>
<p>His move thrust the country, a key Western ally and also the richest economy in the region, deeper into political uncertainty.</p>
<p data-reactid="41">The election board has said the poll will go ahead with seven candidates on the ballot, including Odinga.</p>
<p data-reactid="42">Akombe, a member of the election board’s top panel, cited severe partisan political divisions among its eight members and the secretariat for her decision to leave.</p>
<p data-reactid="43">“The commission has become a party to the current crisis. The commission is under siege,” she said in a statement issued from New York and dated Tuesday.</p>
<p data-reactid="44">She told BBC radio she had fled from Kenya to New York after receiving numerous threats but did not identify who was threatening her.</p>
<p data-reactid="45">The upcoming election would not be credible, she added.</p>
<p data-reactid="46">“We need the commission to be courageous and speak out that this election as planned cannot meet the basic expectations of a credible election.”</p>
<p data-reactid="47">Kenyan law requires the repeat election to be held within 60 days of nullification of the original vote.</p>
<p data-reactid="49">Odinga has called daily demonstrations to protest against the election body. At least four people have been killed during protests following the court ruling.</p>
<p>Kenyatta has accused Odinga of pulling out of the race after sensing defeat and trying to cause chaos to force a power-sharing deal, something the opposition strongly denies.</p>
<p>More than 1,200 people were killed in violence after a disputed presidential election in Dec. 2007.</p>
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<p class="Attribution_content_27_rw" data-reactid="51">Reporting by Duncan Miriri; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg</p>
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Kenyan election official flees country ahead of presidential poll

<p><em><span class="fn author-name">Dominic Burbidge |</span>University of Oxford</em></p>
<p>The leader of Kenya’s opposition coalition, Raila Odinga, has withdrawnfrom the repeat presidential election ordered by the country’s Supreme Court. Only two candidates were scheduled to compete in the upcoming poll, the other being the incumbent president, Uhuru Kenyatta.</p>
<p>A day after Odinga’s withdrawal, the Kenyan High Court ruled in favourof including another presidential candidate in the ballot, meaning that the election is now likely to go ahead. The new candidate, Ekuru Aukot, was an interested party in the Supreme Court case that invalidated the August 8th election.</p>
<p>Odinga’s pullout came in protest at the perceived inability of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to carry out a free and fair election.</p>
<p>In the recent petition to the Supreme Court, his National Super Alliance (NASA) accused the electoral commission of having failed in its duties to conduct an election, and demonstrated clear evidence of irregularities such as missing and forged electoral forms.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court found in favour of the opposition coalition, and so fresh elections were scheduled within 60 days.</p>
<p>While there is consistency to Odinga’s distrust of the electoral commission, his position holds no legal consistency. The opposition made a petition to the Supreme Court and should therefore abide by its ruling.</p>
<p>The court found that the electoral commission failed to conduct the election appropriately, but that there were no grounds for saying Kenyatta’s coalition, the Jubilee Alliance, had been the ones to rig it.</p>
<p>Odinga’s opposition coalition petitioned the courts and got the result they wanted. They should therefore have stood by the ruling and continued to follow constitutional channels. By withdrawing Odinga is terminating the country’s democratic processes. If the need for IEBC reform was enough reason to delay the election further, a case could have been brought to the Supreme Court on this basis.</p>
<p>The IEBC is a commission created by the Constitution, meaning its duty to conduct free and fair elections is a democratic fundamental. As such, political opposition to its operations has a clear legal remedy. Instead, Odinga’s abandonment of the process has handed legal credibility to his rivals.</p>
<p>Kenya is in uncharted territory. The group that sought free and fair elections through lawful means – the opposition coalition – has now abandoned trust in the constitutional commission set up to bring about the poll.</p>
<p>In making the decision Odinga has also signed a death sentence on his political career stretching back 40 years.</p>
<h2>A history of hard fought battles</h2>
<p>Odinga has had a lot of practice over very many years in navigating the difficult path between acting according to the rules of the system and opposing manipulation of those rules.</p>
<p>In 2002 he joined a broader inter-ethnic coalition to force leadership away from the Kenya African National Union (KANU). In power since independence in 1963, KANU had consistently thwarted the emergence of free and fair elections in Kenya in the 1990s under President Daniel arap Moi.</p>
<p>But those who initially spearheaded the inter-ethnic alliance also seemed to abuse the system to their advantage in the 2007 elections. Odinga led popular protests against the swearing-in of President Mwai Kibaki in complaint of this. The standoff plunged the country into one of its worst periods of political violence, with over 1,000 dead and hundreds of thousands internally displaced.</p>
<p>In 2013 Odinga took the disputed election results to the courts. But the Supreme Court allowed Kenyatta’s election to stand.</p>
<p>Many therefore felt that Odinga had finally got the democracy he’d fought for when the Supreme Court invalidated the 2017 results and ordered fresh elections. But that conclusion appears to have been premature. Odinga’s exit from the democratic process means opposition supporters’ faith in the system is at the point of collapse.</p>
<p>Odinga has been consistent in his criticisms of the electoral commission. And he has acted in a principled way. He should be praised for both.</p>
<p>Indeed, the failure of the electoral commission dates back as far as the constitutional referendum in 2010. A British court found that electoral commissioners accepted bribes from a UK firm to win the contract for printing ballot papers. In the 2017 elections, the accusation was that the local tallies did not match the central tallies being received electronically in Nairobi. The physical forms that would have reconciled the differences were then said to have been lost.</p>
<p>Despite the catastrophic failure to conduct this year’s election appropriately, the electoral commission chairperson refused to stand down, reducing public credibility in the institution to nil.</p>
<h2>Complete new election?</h2>
<p>The NASA coalition has tried to substantiate its position. Technically-speaking, they say, their withdrawal means no election can take place, and so a complete new election should be organised. So rather than Kenyatta being handed victory on a plate, a longer time for fresh elections would be given, with all allowed to compete as if it were a very first round. That would provide a breather of at least 90 days, with additional time for parties to nominate new leaders.</p>
<p>But such a legal argument is fanciful. It is based on a misreading of article 138 (8) (b) of Kenya’s Constitution which says that a complete new election must be organised if one of the candidates dies during the campaign period. The NASA coalition are arguing that their withdrawal from the elections is an abandonment that is forced by the failure of the electoral commission, and therefore tantamount to the death of a leader during the campaign period.</p>
<p>If they believe this is a solid legal argument, they can again petition the courts to invalidate the preparations for the fresh elections. But the legal argument is weak, and I doubt they will try this route.</p>
<p>The twist that NASA did not expect was the High Court ruling that a minor candidate is allowed to take the place of Odinga. That will mean an election that gives greater validity to Kenyatta’s inevitable victory – an enormous blow to Odinga’s strategy.</p>
<p>The High Court decision to include Ekuru Aukot is based on the fact that he was part of the original case that disputed the 2017 election results. But the court has made a grave error of legal judgment: Aukot was an ‘interested party’ to that case, not one of the ‘petitioners’. This is, in legal terms, a big difference. If he was a successful petitioner in the Supreme Court case, and therefore a valid candidate now, the fresh elections should have involved him from the start and been contested by three candidates.</p>
<p>One cannot simply add candidates as one goes to make the election look competitive.</p>
<p>In any case, the inclusion of Aukot will be of no consequence to the result. In the disputed 8 August polls he received a mere 0.18% of the vote, making him the 5th placed candidate. That compares against a supposed 54.17% for Kenyatta.</p>
<p>The electoral commission will, however turbulently, take forward the court judgments and hold an election between Kenyatta and Aukot. The polls will certainly mean Kenyatta is declared President of Kenya for his second term in a row.</p>
<p>This is the fault of Odinga who has taken the decision to exit lawful processes prematurely. The road to competitive free and fair elections in Kenya extends ever longer into the horizon.</p>


What Odinga’s election pullout means for Kenya’s turbulent democracy

<p>Kenyan stocks and bonds fell on Wednesday after opposition leader Raila Odinga pulled out of a repeat presidential election set for Oct. 26.</p>
<p data-reactid="43">The all-share index dropped 0.67 percent and the blue-chip index 1.41 percent, while Kenya’s dollar-denominated 2024 sovereign bond fell as much as 1.2 cents, according to Reuters data, as political uncertainty deepened.</p>
<p>Odinga, who successfully challenged the Aug. 8 re-election of President Uhuru Kenyatta last month, said the repeat poll should be canceled and a fresh election held after the election board has carried out reforms.</p>
<p data-reactid="46">“There was cautious optimism, but now political risk has risen considerably overnight driven by the opposition candidate’s withdrawal,” said Ken Minjire, the head of securities at Genghis Capital in Nairobi.</p>
<p data-reactid="47">The all-share index has lost 5.5 percent and the blue chip index is down 10 percent since the August election was annulled.</p>
<p data-reactid="48">The Kenyan shilling, which fell 0.5 percent after the election was annulled on Sept. 1, was stable against the dollar on Wednesday. Traders attributed that to the central bank’s credibility, which is bolstered by healthy foreign-exchange reserves.</p>
<p data-reactid="49">It was unclear after Odinga’s withdrawal whether repeat elections would be held on Oct. 26. A court ruling on Wednesday said other candidates, none of whom polled more than one percent, could also be on the ballot, possibly giving Kenyatta someone to run against other than Odinga.</p>
<p data-reactid="50">The opposition leader has been leading regular protests against the electoral board, and hundreds of his supporters marched through the streets of the capital, Nairobi, on Wednesday.</p>
<p data-reactid="51">Concern over the prolonged political uncertainty have hit economic growth, with businesses and households feeling the pinch. The government has already cut this year’s economic growth forecast to 5.5 percent from the initial 5.9 percent.</p>
<p data-reactid="52">But Aly Khan Satchu, an independent trader and analyst, said he expected the election to go ahead after the court ruled in favour of the minority candidate, ushering in a relief rally afterwards.</p>
<p>“I expect the Oct. 26 election to take place &#8230; We should start to see a recovery at the bourse,” Satchu said.</p>
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<p class="Attribution_content_27_rw" data-reactid="54">Additional reporting by Karin Strohecker in London; Editing by</p>
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Kenyan assets tumble after opposition leader pulls out of election

<p data-reactid="38">Kenya lurched deeper into political confusion on Wednesday as a court ruling and a parliamentary vote appeared to ease Uhuru Kenyatta’s path to a second term as president, a day after his chief rival quit an election they were to contest.</p>
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<p data-reactid="46">Kenyatta and Raila Odinga were due to face off in a repeat election on Oct. 26, after the Supreme Court annulled their August ballot &#8211; in which the president was declared the winner.</p>
<p data-reactid="47">But Odinga pulled out of the re-run on Tuesday, fuelling doubts about whether it would be contested at all. Wednesday’s interventions by the judiciary and legislature added to the uncertainty.</p>
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<p data-reactid="49">As police used teargas to disperse opposition protesters demanding electoral reform, the High Court approved a petition by Ekuru Aukot, who polled less than 1 percent in the August vote, to contest the second ballot.</p>
<p data-reactid="50">The election board later issued a statement saying that all eight candidates who competed in August would be on the ballot. It also said although Odinga had notified them of his withdrawal by letter, he had not yet submitted the official form to do so.</p>
<p data-reactid="51">The developments suggested that the second election would go ahead, with Kenyatta the likely winner against a plethora of weaker candidates. No challenger except Odinga polled more than 1 percent.</p>
<p data-reactid="52">Further muddying the political waters, parliament passed an election law amendment stating that if one candidate withdrew from the re-run vote, the remaining one would automatically win. The vote was boycotted by opposition lawmakers.</p>
<p data-reactid="53">The law aimed to ensure Kenyatta could be declared president if he faced no challengers.</p>
<p>The events stoked confusion among voters and fears that politically-driven violence might escalate. Months of political uncertainty have already blunted growth in East Africa’s richest nation, a long-time ally of the West.</p>
<p>“There’s a real atmosphere of confusion and uncertainty. There seems to be dozens of opinions of what should come next,” said Murithi Mutiga, a senior Horn of Africa analyst for the global thinktank International Crisis Group.</p>
<h3>UNEASE</h3>
<p data-reactid="57">Justifying his pullout on Tuesday, Odinga said the election would not be free and fair and renewed calls for the electoral board (IEBC), which he blamed for the procedural irregularities identified in the first ballot, to be replaced.</p>
<p data-reactid="58">Opposition supporters on Wednesday renewed their protests for electoral reform.</p>
<p data-reactid="59">Demonstrators lit bonfires in Kisumu, an Odinga stronghold in the country’s west, while more than a thousand supporters marched through the central business district in the capital Nairobi. Police used teargas to disperse them in both cities, witnesses said.</p>
<p data-reactid="60">Juliana Otieno, the chief executive of the Oginga Odinga Hospital in the city, said 17 people had been admitted with injuries suffered during the protests. A Reuters witness counted at least five of them with bullet wounds.</p>
<p data-reactid="61">Kisumu’s police commander, Titus Yoma, said he had no information on the bullet wounds and his officers were still quelling the protests, which were centred around two slums in the lakeside city.</p>
<p data-reactid="62">At least 37 people were killed in protests immediately following the August vote, almost all of them by police, a Kenyan rights group said on Monday. Ethnic clashes killed 1,200 people following a disputed presidential poll in 2007.</p>
<p data-reactid="63">“We want a reformed IEBC,” said Elisha Odhiambo, an opposition legislator, referring to the electoral board, which has frequently relied on riot police dispersing protests outside its offices in recent weeks.</p>
<p data-reactid="64">Mombasa Governor Ali Hassan Joho, a key opposition player, told protesters in Uhuru Park: “Our voices must be heard. We have no war with anyone but we will not allow anyone to stifle us.”</p>
<p data-reactid="65">After the High Court ruling in his favour, Aukot told reporters that he still had concerns about the board and would issue a statement in a day or two giving clarity about his plans.</p>
<p data-reactid="66">It was unclear if other candidates from the first ballot with little support would also seek to be included, but the election board said it still had time to print ballot papers.</p>
<p data-reactid="67">The Sept. 1 Supreme Court judgement that nullified Kenyatta’s 1.4 million vote win also stipulated elections had to be held within 60 days.</p>
<p data-reactid="68">If that schedule is not met, the constitution provides for the speaker of parliament, a member of Kenyatta’s party, to take power.</p>
<p data-reactid="69">With two weeks to go until the elections, it is still unclear who will stand.</p>
<p data-reactid="70">“I would expect one of the parties will try to seek an authoritative announcement from the Supreme Court,” International Crisis Group’s Mutiga said.</p>
<p data-reactid="71">Amid the political uncertainty, the government has trimmed this year’s GDP growth forecast from 5.9 percent to 5.5 percent last month.</p>
<p>The country’s equity markets slid further on Wednesday. Kenya’s all share index closed down 0.67 percent while the blue chip index fell 1.41 percent. [nL8N1MM3L8]</p>
<div class="Attribution_attribution_o4ojT" data-reactid="72">
<p class="Attribution_content_27_rw" data-reactid="73">Additional reporting by Humphrey Malalo and George Obulutsa; editing by John Stonestreet and Toby Chopra<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-286672" src="http://cnbc.africa/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Kenya-Elections_Uhuru-Posters_Flickr-730x480-300x197.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="197" /></p>
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Kenya vote in balance as crisis deepens after Odinga quits

<p data-reactid="32">The Kenyan election board should include Ekuru Aukot, who polled less than 1 percent in presidential elections in August, on the ballot in the event of a re-run, the High Court ruled on Wednesday.</p>
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<p data-reactid="40">“I find nothing to bar the petitioner from contesting the fresh election,” said Justice John Mativo.</p>
<p data-reactid="41">His ruling means President Uhuru Kenyatta may still have a challenger on Oct. 26, when the re-run is scheduled despite the withdrawal of top opposition candidate on Raila Odinga over allegations of bias.</p>
<div class="Attribution_attribution_o4ojT" data-reactid="42">
<p class="Attribution_content_27_rw" data-reactid="43">reporting by Duncan Miriri; writing by Katharine Houreld; editing by John Stonestreet</p>
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Kenya High Court rules minor candidate should be on ballot for poll re-run

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<p>Kenya&#8217;s Opposition flag bearer Raila Odinga has pulled out of the October 26th presidential elections saying there was no level playing field that would ensure free and fair elections. The IEBC has acknowledged formal receipt of Odinga&#8217;s withdrawal.</p>


IEBC acknowledges Odinga’s withdrawal from election re-run

<div class="ArticleBody_body_2ECha" data-reactid="38">
<p data-reactid="39">Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga said on Tuesday he would not stand in a court-ordered re-run of August’s presidential election that is scheduled for Oct. 26.</p>
<p data-reactid="40">Odinga has repeatedly said he would boycott the polls if the election board did not replace officials he blamed for irregularities in August.</p>
<p data-reactid="41">“In the interest of the people of Kenya, the region and world at large, we believe that all will be best served by (opposition grouping) NASA vacating the presidential candidature of elections slated for 26th of October, 2017,” Odinga told a news conference in the capital of Nairobi.</p>
<p data-reactid="42">Last month, the Supreme Court nullified incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta’s win on Aug. 8 due to procedural irregularities and ordered a new poll to be held within 60 days.</p>
<p data-reactid="43">On Tuesday, legislators from the ruling party were debating proposed amendments to the election laws, which said if a candidate boycotted an election, the remaining candidate automatically wins.</p>
<p data-reactid="44">Opposition legislators boycotted the session.</p>
<p data-reactid="45">Ruling party legislators told Reuters on Monday that they were trying to head off a constitutional crisis if Odinga pulled out of the election.</p>
<div class="Attribution_attribution_o4ojT" data-reactid="46">
<p class="Attribution_content_27_rw" data-reactid="47">Reporting by George Obulutsa and John Ndiso; Writing by Katharine Houreld; Editing by Alison Williams</p>
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Kenyan opposition leader withdraws from repeat presidential poll

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<p>The members of parliament in Kenya have discussed amendments to election laws as those aligned to opposition coalition NASA boycotted the sitting.</p>


Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga withdraws from election re-run

<p><em><span class="fn author-name">Faith Kiboro |</span>SMC University</em></p>
<p>After a Supreme Court ruling that invalidated Kenya’s August 8 presidential election, the country now finds itself in a moral predicament between political stability and electoral credibility.</p>
<p>On one hand, the ruling that ordered a fresh presidential election was a win for the democratic process the world over. The court found that Kenya’s Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission was in violation of constitutional procedure. It also found that the commission had violated election law and in so doing impugned the credibility of the election.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the court’s decision has ushered the country into a period of political instability. Where it would have closed the chapter on the 2017 election cycle, it is now gearing up for a repeat poll slated for October 26.</p>
<p>Kenyans now find themselves in a tight spot made even more uncomfortable by demands being made by Raila Odinga and his National Super Alliance. The opposition is insisting that certain conditions, including reconstituting the election commission and reprinting key election documents, must be met before the October 26 election can be held.</p>
<p>The opposition’s hard stance could result in a delayed election. This could also happen if OT-Morpho, the French biometrics firm which supplied the electoral commission with its electronic voting system fails to have a new system ready in time. It’s indicated that it won’t.</p>
<p>If indeed the key issue with the last election was that the voting system was not “simple and verifiable” as demanded by law, then <em>any</em> delays could be interpreted as being in the interests of a free, fair, credible and transparent election.</p>
<p>But for those who argue that no electoral process can be perfect, and that the August 8th poll was merely dogged by minor and inadvertent errors, then it begs the question: what is more important, electoral credibility or political stability?</p>
<h2>Electoral credibility</h2>
<p>The Supreme Court prioritised electoral credibility by invalidating the presidential election result on grounds that the election commission had committed illegalities and irregularities.</p>
<p>In doing so, it broke ranks with foreign election observer missions which had concluded that the presidential election was credible. By and large the Supreme Court ruling was a win for Kenyans and the rule of law. The court took the opportunity to audit the electoral process for transparency and to define the parameters of a credible election.</p>
<p>But its ruling raised questions of its own. For instance, the court ruled that the electoral commission didn’t strictly adhere to election procedure as set out in law. It also held that there had been tampering with the commission’s electronic voter management system. But it mandated the same commission to carry out a fresh election within 60 days.</p>
<p>Because the court gave no direction on the reconstitution of the commission, the petitioner Odinga and the respondent President Uhuru Kenyatta are now at an impasse over who should remain at the commission.</p>
<h2>Political stability</h2>
<p>Those who disagree with the Supreme Court ruling see the court’s decision as a subversion of the will of the Kenyan people. For them, the ruling was a destabilising force which didnt’ reflect the people’s decision.</p>
<p>Giving credence to this argument is the fact that Kenya is viewed as the economic hub of East Africa. If the country does not return to normalcy as quickly as possible there will be a ripple effects, including economic, across the region.</p>
<p>On top of this, Kenya finds itself in a precarious situation because the executive is at odds with the judiciary. Kenyatta’s Jubilee Party has the majority in both houses of Parliament. It is therefore within its capacity to limit the independence of the judiciary should it continue to feel aggrieved by the Supreme Court decision.</p>
<p>This could happen through a parliamentary referendum as per Article 256 of the Constitution and would involve members of parliament deciding to amend the constitution without a popular vote.</p>
<p>But by far the most pressing threat to Kenya’s continued political stability is the possibility that the Supreme Court may have created a situation in which Kenya could remain in election mode ad infinitum. Nothing stops a new petition from being filed should one of the candidates contest the next poll results.</p>
<p>If we look at Kenya’s neighbour Rwanda we see an example of a head of state that’s arguably prioritised a semblance of political stability over election credibility. Paul Kagame was recently re-elected for the third time. Some argue that his rule has benefited Rwandans because the country has shown better socio-economic outcomes than most African countries.</p>
<p>But there tensions simmer and in the absence of electoral credibility, Rwanda’s political stability may be skin deep.</p>
<h2>Rethinking Kenya’s election system</h2>
<p>The Kenya case raises questions about elections in Africa and whether they are a force for political stability or instability. I would posit that Kenya has made great strides to improve electoral credibility since its catastrophic 2007 election.</p>
<p>In conclusion, election credibility and political stability aren’t mutually exclusive.</p>
<p>There should be a positive correlation between democracy and the improved well being of a state and its people. But in a country like Kenya with 40-plus tribes, the more populous tribes will always take advantage of their voting might, while the less populous ones struggle to compete. The system just does not work in their favour. It would seem therefore that they are locked out – not by choice but by circumstance.</p>
<p>So, does a majoritarian, “winner-takes-all” system suit an ethnically diverse society like Kenya’s?</p>
<p>Perhaps, not. I’m persuaded that there needs to be a re-imagination of electoral democratic practices in Africa. Kenya should take recent events as an opportunity to clean up its institutions and electoral system. If it doesn’t, future polls will continue to offer up a point of diversion between electoral credibility and a tenuous political stability.</p>


The thin line between electoral credibility and political stability in Kenya

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<p>On the 1st of September, the Kenyan Supreme Court made an unprecedented decision when it ordered a re-run of the presidential election in 60 days. Yvonne Mhango,  Renaissance Capital joins CNBC Africa to unpack the candidates&#8217; policy avenues.</p>


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