On Monday, the results of the presidential elections in Kenya were announced. The country’s vice-president William Ruto became the new head of state, who managed to win over the younger part of the audience with the help of populist slogans. True, it was not without scandal. Most of the members of the Central Election Commission of Kenya refused to put their signatures under the document, which summed up the results of the vote. But this did not prevent the authorities from approving them.
Chaos is tradition
The general elections in Kenya were held on 9 August. In addition to the president, 22 million registered voters elected 47 governors and the same number of senators, as well as 337 parliamentarians and 1,450 district legislators. Vice President William Ruto won the presidential race. He received 50.49%, his main rival Raila Odinga – 48.85%.
Weak voter registration rates and a relatively low turnout – about 65.4% versus 79.51% in 2017 – speak in themselves of Kenyans’ fatigue with “the same faces”, their intrigues and unfulfilled promises.
Kenya is considered one of the most stable and prosperous democracies in East Africa and the entire continent, with a competitive public policy and an emphatically independent judiciary.
But the pre-election period here is not complete without scandals – populist statements, mutual accusations of corruption among politicians, vote buying and general social tension. And the elections themselves are often characterized by chaos in the work of election commissions. The memory is still fresh in the country of how, in 2007-2008, allegations of falsification escalated into inter-ethnic clashes that claimed the lives of more than a thousand people. These events shook up the country and set off a series of reforms that culminated in the adoption in 2010 of a new constitution that emphasized decentralization and a revision of the powers of the executive branch. However, the electoral commission has remained a weak link in the work of state institutions, which again manifested itself during the last elections.
In most constituencies, the comprehensive election management system responsible for registering voters failed, and people dispersed without waiting in line for their ballot.
As a result, in some districts, voting for governors, local authorities and deputies had to be postponed until the end of August. But the results of the presidential elections were still summed up. True, after the announcement of the voting results, four of the seven members of the election commission refused to sign the final documents, referring to the “non-transparency of the process.”
But at least so far everything has gone without serious inter-ethnic clashes, although there were still small riots on the streets of Kenyan cities after the announcement of the results. However, in these elections, economic problems came to the fore both in the programs of candidates and in the preferences of voters. Rising cost of living, fuel, bread, flour, corruption and unemployment, devastating drought drowned out historical grievances and mutual claims of ethnic groups.
Who’s Who in Kenya
Four candidates registered for the presidential election, but all analysts and sociological services predicted a fight between two veterans of the political scene – Raila Odinga and William Ruto and their coalitions Azimio la Umoja (Declaration of Unity, 29 parties) and Kenya Kwanza (Kenya First, 12 batches) respectively.
Raila Odinga, 77, was the successor to President Uhuru Kenyatta, who was finishing his second and final constitutional term. Mr. Odinga is the oldest presidential candidate in Kenya’s 31-year history of multi-party democracy. According to TIFA polls, he was in the lead in seven of the nine regions of the country. Former Prime Minister (2008-2013) Raila Oding with many years of experience, Luo by birth, comes from the oldest political dynasty. He is the son of Jaramoga Odinga Odinga, a prominent independence fighter and first vice-president of independent Kenya in the government of Jomo Kenyatta, by the way, the father of the outgoing president.
Despite the huge political capital, in the presidential elections, for which Raila Odinga ran for the fifth time, he was chronically unlucky. In particular, he led the polls in 2013 and 2017, but lost each time after the ballots were counted.
This time, including for the sake of winning a female audience, he took a 64-year-old “iron lady” as a couple – lawyer Martha Carua, who could become the first female vice president in history.
She comes from the country’s largest ethnic group, the Kikuyu, who hails from Mount Kenya, a key region with more than 5 million voters, and has a valuable reputation as a principled fighter against corruption. After her nomination, Raila Odinga became the leader in the polls, but this did not help him.
Raila Odinga’s opponent was the younger and more energetic Vice President of Kenya, 55-year-old William Ruto. He, too, paired up with Mount Kenyan-born Rigati Gachagua, a vocal critic of President Kenyatta, without seeing that his new ally is on trial for corruption.
As the second person in the state, William Ruto during the election campaign presented himself as a non-systemic candidate and a man of the people, emphasizing that he began his career as a street vendor. He accused his rival of abusing hereditary privileges and close ties to the establishment.
Raila Odinga really owns real estate and industrial companies, although he himself estimated his fortune undeservedly modestly – only $ 16.9 million. However, William Ruto is not so simple either. In Kenya, the threshold for entering big politics is unnecessarily expensive, so everything is decided by large fortunes and connections. Mr. Ruto is a prosperous businessman and landowner with assets in the hospitality, real estate, agro-industry, and at the same time an experienced politician with 30 years of experience.
Behind the struggle of William Ruto with the “dominance” of the Odinga and Kenyatta dynasties lies a long-term political saga, sustained in the best traditions of the country’s political culture, where situational alliances and betrayals are in the order of things.
Both William Ruto and Raila Odinga have changed partners many times in previous political campaigns. Eventually, in 2013, an alliance of Uhuru Kenyatta and Vice President William Ruto came to power, actively using viral propaganda on social media and getting the better of Raila Odinga. The alliance was sealed with an unspoken promise: after serving two terms, Uhuru Kenyatta would support William Ruto as his successor. In 2017, the couple successfully repeated the combination, once again frustrating Raila Odinga’s plans. But already in 2018, relations between the president and the vice president deteriorated, and, despite some attempts to reconcile, the president made a bet on Raila Odinga, breaking his promise. But in the end, it still didn’t help.
Mr. Odinga came from a center-left position, promising that if he is elected, the unemployed and the poor will receive $50 monthly benefits, that the country will launch the Babacare (his nickname Baba, or “father”) universal health insurance program. However, analysts consider the decisive factor in his victory to be the support of young people who bought into the image of William Ruto as a non-systemic politician, which, in particular, helped him win part of the Mount Kenya electorate – the fortress of President Kenyatta. Mr. Ruto’s main promise is lending to those employed in the informal and street economy, those very “hustlers” who make up 83% of the workforce and the majority of more than 22 million voters. Now the question is how William Ruto will keep his promises and whether he will disappoint his electorate.