WITHOUT providing any proof, the secretary-general of Kenya’s governing party has said the country’s elections were rigged, fuelling public anxiety on Friday as media houses significantly slowed down their unofficial tallies of the presidential vote.
Only the electoral commission is authorised to declare a winner, but the tallies were seen as a bulwark against the kind of rigging allegations that have previously sparked violence.
Kenya, East Africa’s richest and most stable nation, has a history of violent election disputes. More than 1,200 people were killed after the 2007 elections and more than 100 after the 2017 elections.
So far the polls were generally praised by international observers, but problems usually emerge after results are announced.
Outgoing President Uhuru Kenyatta must step down after serving the constitutional maximum of two five-year terms. His would-be successors are former political prisoner and veteran opposition leader Raila Odinga and Deputy President William Ruto. Kenyatta has fallen out with Ruto and endorsed Odinga.
Rigging claim
Late on Thursday, the chairman of Kenyatta’s Jubilee party issued a statement alleging ‘massive subtle rigging’ and claiming the ‘electoral process was highly compromised’ after Ruto’s party made a strong showing in an area where the dominant ethnicity is the same as Kenyatta.
The statement alleged voter intimidation, bribery, illegal displaying of campaign materials in polling station, mishandling of party agents and incorrect use of election materials. It provided no evidence and did not explain why the allegations had been made so late. Party officials were unreachable for comment.
Previous elections have largely been determined by ethnic voting blocs. But Ruto has sought to make this election about economics, portraying himself as a self-made ‘hustler’ in contrast to political ‘dynasties’. Odinga and Kenyatta are the sons of Kenya’s first vice president and president, respectively.
Ian Dan, a parcel service attendant the main bus park in Odinga’s stronghold of Kisumu, said business was very slow.
‘We are in darkness and this is not good for us. People are anxious and need to have a clear picture,’ he said. ‘There are allegations of rigging flying in social media, but many people are waiting to hear from Raila Odinga or William Ruto. Their word will influence people’s reaction.’
Media slowdown
Media tallies, which had nearly stopped by Friday morning, showed both leading candidates neck and neck, just under the 50 percent mark they needed to win. Less than a percent was divided between two other marginal candidates.
If no candidate wins more than 50 percent plus one vote, the two frontrunners will have a run-off.
The electoral commission is the only body legally authorised to declare a winner. It initially uploaded images of results forms from more than 46,000 polling stations, but had not tallied them. Instead, media houses employed teams to download forms and enter them into a database.
More than 99.7 percent of polling station results are in but thousands have not been counted by the media. The abrupt slowdown started when around 80 percent of the vote had been counted.
Prominent Kenyan columnist and cartoonist Patrick Gathara criticised the slowdown, tweeting: ‘So once again KE media have chickened out and have stopped updating their counts? It was too good to last.’
But executives from Citizen and Nation media groups said exhausted staff needed a rest.
‘Now we have about a third of people working that we started with and we intend to pick up pace in the next few hours when the rest of the team come back,’ said Linus Kaikai, Director of Strategy at Citizen.
Stephen Gitagama, the CEO of Nation Media group, said his staff also needed a rest and that they focused on quality control. He referred Reuters to the election commission, known as the IEBC.
‘IEBC bears the responsibility of providing the results, not the media,’ he said.
On Friday morning, the election commission had finally begun displaying an official count of presidential results on a board at the main tallying centre. It had counted 1.5 percent of the vote.
At 0730 GMT, a Reuters tally of 180 out of 291 constituency-level results had Ruto leading by 51.66 percent and Odinga at 47.69 percent. Eleven constituency-level results images were unreadable or lacked totals.
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In a related development, the head of Kenya’s government-created media council says local media outlets haven’t been asked to stop their counting of presidential election results after observers noticed a dramatic slowdown in reporting on the close contest.
Media Council of Kenya CEO David Omwoyo told The Associated Press (AP) on Friday that ‘no one has asked anyone to stop,’ but added that ‘we want to align the numbers with each other’ and ‘I think let’s peer review our numbers.’
He said he was going into a meeting with media leaders as he spoke.
Observers and journalists with local media houses have expressed concern after Kenya Television Network, NTV Kenya and Citizen TV tallies of presidential results forms posted online by the electoral commission stopped or slowed on Thursday evening.
The differing results as media raced to do their tallies led to anxiety among some Kenyans as longtime opposition leader Raila Odinga, backed by former rival and outgoing President Uhuru Kenyatta in his fifth attempt at the presidency, faces Deputy President William Ruto, who fell out with the president years ago.
Kenya could see a runoff presidential election for the first time.
The public posting of results forms was meant to be a ground breaking exercise in transparency for the electoral commission, which has been under pressure after the high court cited irregularities and overturned the results of the previous presidential election in 2017, a first in Africa. Kenyatta won the new vote after Odinga boycotted it.
The electoral commission chair, Wafula Chebukati, even appeared to tease local media houses a day after Tuesday’s election, saying they were ‘behind’ in tallying the more than 46,000 results forms being posted from around the country. On Thursday, however, he stressed that only the electoral commission can declare a winner.
On Wednesday, the media council in a statement noted ‘growing concerns’ about the varying tallies and said it was consulting with media owners and editors “to find an urgent solution to this to ensure Kenyans receive synchronised results.”
To win outright, a candidate needs more than half of all votes and at least 25 percent of the votes in more than half of Kenya’s 47 counties. No outright winner means a runoff election within 30 days.
Official results will be announced within a week of the vote, but impatience among some Kenyans is growing. Some have turned to counting a far smaller set of results forms for 291 constituencies also being posted online by the electoral commission. More than 65 percent of them had been posted Friday morning.
Human rights groups have warned about ‘rising levels of false or misleading information being shared on social media’ as the country awaits the official results.
Turnout dipped sharply in this election, to 65 percent, as some Kenyans expressed weariness with seeing long-familiar political lead
ers on the ballot and frustration with economic issues including widespread corruption and rising prices.
