The Kenyan Elections of 2007- An Introduction (original) (raw)

The 2013 Kenyan Elections: A 'Triumph of Democracy'?

Having been declared the winner of the 2013 Kenyan presidential election, Uhuru Kenyatta pronounced the polls a ‘triumph of democracy’. But to many commentators they were anything but. Prior to the election localized violence undermined the willingness of citizens to engage in the political process in a number of areas. During the campaign, the Jubilee Alliance manipulated ICC allegations against Kenyatta and his running mate to push a divisive ‘them against us’ rhetoric that depicted their main rival, Raila Odinga, as a national traitor scheming with foreign powers to undermine Kenyan sovereignty. For their part, Odinga’s supporters emphasized the need to prevent the Kikuyu and Kalenjin – the two groups most strongly represented in the Jubilee Alliance – from securing the presidency again. As the political temperature increased, there was little space for reconciliation and nation building. Moreover, while polling day passed without incident, the electoral system fell apart as soon...

Violence and Elections: Will Kenya Collapse?

World Policy Journal

Kenya, the island of peace in the volatile Great Lakes region of Africa, recently experienced violence of alarming proportions. After the contested presidential elections on December 27, 2007, hundreds were killed, thousands wounded, and hundreds of thousands displaced; property and infrastructure worth billions were destroyed. Kenyans, who voted peacefully and in unprecedented large numbers, were shocked and enraged first by the fraudulent election and then by the violence that terrorized large parts of the country. International observers seemed similarly stunned and unsure of how to respond; long considered the stable country in a region wracked by war, Kenya's violence has serious implications for the entire East Africa/Great Lakes region. Much of the commentary and analysis so far has focused on the fraudulent election and hasty declaration of incumbent Mwai Kibaki as president. Yet, the violent events following the election were by no means necessary or pre-ordained. How do we understand this violence? What does it mean for the future of the country and the region? Will Kenya share the bloody fate of its neighbors? Kenya is a regional UN hub, home to numerous refugees and an important economic player in East Africa. If it is headed towards war and disintegration, then the entire region, and indeed the world, will be deeply and adversely impacted. Few dispute that the election was flawed. European Union observers and Kenyan election monitors reported many anomalies: unusually high voter turn out, lack of access to voting centers, names missing from registers, questionable voting hours, party agents and police officers killed. Most important, the government body tasked with overseeing the election, the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) showed clear signs of manipulating the vote counting with bias towards the government. 1 As a result, the ECK chairman says he does not know who actually won the presidential election. Five ECK commissioners distanced themselves from the announced results. Reportedly, both President Mwai Kibaki's Party of National Unity (PNU) and Raila Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) rigged votes in their strongholds. Both parties maintained they won, but under pressure the ECK declared Kibaki winner; on December 30, 2007, he was sworn in as president in a secretive ceremony. Violence followed quickly. Much analysis has focused on the rigging and the jostling for power between two powerful leaders and their ethnic followers-Mwai Kibaki (Kikuyu) and Raila Odinga (Luo). The Kikuyu are Kenya's largest ethnic community (about 22 percent of the total population). Among many others are the Luhya (14 percent), Luo (13 percent), Kalenjin (12 percent), and Kamba (11 percent). Politicians used ethnicity to mobilize votes and deliberately create divisions between the Kikuyu, who voted largely for the Party for National

Ethnic Violence and the Prospects for Democracy in the Aftermath of the 2007 Kenyan Elections

Public Culture, 2009

On the night of December 29, 2007, Kenya seemed poised for that rarest of achievements in Africa, a peaceful handover of power to an opposition party in a democratic election. The opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) had defeated the Party of National Unity (PNU) of incumbent president Mwai Kibaki in the parliamentary election, winning ninety-nine seats to forty-three. Raila Odinga, the ODM presidential candidate, was leading in the presidential vote count by more than a million votes. The next day, however, the Electoral Commission of Kenya announced that the sitting president had been reelected by a margin of fewer than a quarter million votes. 1 In a hastily arranged ceremony closed to the public, Kibaki was sworn in for a second term. The country exploded. Through the months of January and February 2008, some fifteen hundred people were killed and five hundred thousand displaced from their homes in violence fueled by outrage over the stolen election. 2 As the killing and burning spread across the country in early January, Kofi Annan, the former secretary-general of the United Nations, was called in to mediate between the two rival leaders and their parties. After exhausting negotiations, Annan brokered a deal at the end of February in which the two parties would form a "grand coalition" government

Kenya 2017: The Interim Elections

Analysis of the main themes and potential outcomes of the Kenyan election of 2017 and the implications of this for the country's future.

Patrick Asingo, The 11th June 2008 By-Elections in Kenya A Rejoinder, 2008

This paper is a reaction to Anne Cussac’s article: ‘The 11 June 2008 By-Elections’ which appeared in Mambo Vol. VII n° 7; 2008. Cussac set out to measure the popularity of PNU and ODM after the post-election conflicts caused by the discredited 27 December, 2007 elections. She uses the June 2008 by-elections to measure the popularity of the two parties not only because they occurred shortly after the political violence, but also because they were the first to be held after the formation of the grand coalition government between PNU and ODM. Focusing on the parliamentary byelection results, the stakes involved in the by-elections, voter turnout, and the role of ethnicity, Cussac concludes that ODM did not win more seats than PNU. However, she falls short of stating what her findings imply for the popularity of the parties, which apparently was her key goal. This article sets the analysis in its right context and questions some of the assumptions underlying Cussac’s paper. A Rejoinder The Context of the By-Elections It is true that the by-elections were held against a background of teething problems in the infant and fragile grand coalition government. It is however, not accurate to argue, as Cussac did, that the decision by ODM and PNU to field candidates in the by-elections is in itself a manifestation of mutual mistrust in the coalition. It should be appreciated that the two parties formed the coalition not because of some shared ideology, but because circumstances forced them to do so. The parties did not dissolve but rather, retained their distinctiveness with a right to field candidates in elections. Coalition governments are generally noisy and fractious—countries where they are regularly formed such as Israel and Germany, know this only too well. Cussac also argues that most of the parliamentary seats at stake had been won by ODM in the December 2007 polls and hence the pressure was on ODM to recapture the lost seats. It is true that ODM won Ainamoi, Emuhaya, and Embakasi in 2007, but it is T his paper is a reaction to Anne Cussac's article: 'The 11 June 2008 By-Elections' which appeared in Mambo Vol. VII n° 7; 2008. Cussac set out to measure the popularity of PNU and ODM after the post-election conflicts caused by the discredited 27 December, 2007 elections. She uses the June 2008 by-elections to measure the popularity of the two parties not only because they occurred shortly after the political violence, but also because they were the first to be held after the formation of the grand coalition government between PNU and ODM. Focusing on the parliamentary by-election results, the stakes involved in the by-elections, voter turnout, and the role of ethnicity, Cussac concludes that ODM did not win more seats than PNU. However, she falls short of stating what her findings imply for the popularity of the parties, which apparently was her key goal. This article sets the analysis in its right context and questions some of the assumptions underlying Cussac's paper. important to understand the circumstances under which they won those seats. Although Mugabe Were of ODM won Embakasi in the 2007 elections, he did so (with a mere 33% of votes cast), because PNU split its votes between Ferdinand Waititu (26%) and John Ndirangu (22%). Given the demographic and geo-political structure of Embakasi and its traditional voting patterns since 1992, Embakasi should have been easily won by PNU. In the by-election, Waititu and Ndirangu joined hands and were supported by ODM-K, whose candidate in the 2007 polls scored 9%. Assuming that there was no shift in voting trends, the PNU candidate should have scored roughly 57% of the votes cast in the by-elections, which is not significantly different from the 56% which Waititu (PNU) received in the by-election. Accordingly, PNU's support remained fairly stable. The ODM candidate, Esther Passaris, only received the support of Sumra Irshadali (CCU) who got 3% in 2007. She therefore should have scored about 36%. However, Passaris scored 42%. Furthermore, in the 2007 poll

New Constitution, Same Old Challenges:Reflections on Kenya's 2013 General Elections

This book follows up on the publication Tensions & Reversals in Democratic Transitions published by Society for International Development and Institute for Development Studies after Kenya’s 2007 Elections. It is a product of a series of consultative meetings by a group of civil society actors and academics convened by SID and Uraia Trust to capture the lessons learnt from Kenya’s 2013 General Elections and interrogate the actors and factors involved. The book paints a picture of an electoral environment which, buoyed by far- reaching institutional reforms driven by the newly promulgated Constitution of Kenya 2010, raised high expectations among Kenyans that the 2013 elections would not only be peaceful but also a lot more credible than those held in 2007. In the end however, the manner in which the 2013 General Elections were conducted did not show evidence of any remarkable departure from what was experienced previously, despite the raft of legal and institutional reforms carried out. The book attempts to explain why things went the way they did and explores what needs to be done differently in future to ensure more free, fair and credible elections.