• Saturday, November 09, 2024
businessday logo

BusinessDay

A Kenyatta is back in charge

businessday-icon

BY NARROWLY crossing the threshold that requires a first-round winner to get more than 50% of the vote, Uhuru Kenyatta is set to be Kenya’s next president. Of the 12.3m votes cast, he got just 8,000 more than were needed. But the contest is not quite over. Raila Odinga, the prime minister, Mr Kenyatta’s chief opponent, who got 43%, has complained of “rampant illegality”. The supreme court will decide whether Mr Kenyatta can be inaugurated on March 26th or whether the election must be rerun or go to a second round.

So far a fragile peace has held. Mr Odinga told supporters not to protest in public for fear of sparking communal violence. Riots in early 2008 following the last election, at the end of 2007, which was bitterly disputed, left at least 1,300 people dead. No one wants a repetition.

The court must now, for a start, investigate why the count took longer than expected. The result was not declared for a full five days. The reason may be more innocent than Mr Odinga’s friends claim. A high-tech voting system was a messy failure. Biometric voter-identification kits proved useless, because polling stations in schools had no power sockets. Backup batteries, where provided, ran out halfway through polling day, leaving clerks to scan paper registers. Furthermore, an electronic system for tallying votes that was meant to supply provisional results from all 291 constituencies broke down within hours. A simple database error was later blamed. After the system crashed, many election officers went by helicopter to Nairobi, the capital, for a manual count.

BY NARROWLY crossing the threshold that requires a first-round winner to get more than 50% of the vote, Uhuru Kenyatta is set to be Kenya’s next president. Of the 12.3m votes cast, he got just 8,000 more than were needed. But the contest is not quite over. Raila Odinga, the prime minister, Mr Kenyatta’s chief opponent, who got 43%, has complained of “rampant illegality”. The supreme court will decide whether Mr Kenyatta can be inaugurated on March 26th or whether the election must be rerun or go to a second round.

So far a fragile peace has held. Mr Odinga told supporters not to protest in public for fear of sparking communal violence. Riots in early 2008 following the last election, at the end of 2007, which was bitterly disputed, left at least 1,300 people dead. No one wants a repetition.

The court must now, for a start, investigate why the count took longer than expected. The result was not declared for a full five days. The reason may be more innocent than Mr Odinga’s friends claim. A high-tech voting system was a messy failure. Biometric voter-identification kits proved useless, because polling stations in schools had no power sockets. Backup batteries, where provided, ran out halfway through polling day, leaving clerks to scan paper registers. Furthermore, an electronic system for tallying votes that was meant to supply provisional results from all 291 constituencies broke down within hours. A simple database error was later blamed. After the system crashed, many election officers went by helicopter to Nairobi, the capital, for a manual count.

Nigeria's leading finance and market intelligence news report. Also home to expert opinion and commentary on politics, sports, lifestyle, and more

Join BusinessDay whatsapp Channel, to stay up to date

Open In Whatsapp