Low turnout taints Kenyatta victory
Only 34.5% of registered voters cast ballots in Kenyan election re-run
Results of Kenya’s presidential election re-run started to trickle in yesterday, with early estimates of the turnout at below 35 per cent, dealing a blow to President Uhuru Kenyatta’s hopes for a decisive second-term mandate.
With nearly all followers of opposition leader Raila Odinga heeding the veteran’s call for a boycott, Kenyatta’s victory is not in question.
Less clear is his ability to unite the east African nation, whose deep ethnic divisions have been exposed during the bloody and controversial election process and multiple court cases in the past three months.
The first election, in August, was annulled by the courts because of procedural irregularities, denying Kenyatta a simple victory over his long-term political rival.
Voting on Thursday was marred by skirmishes between police and stonethrowing opposition supporters, who prevented polling stations from opening in four pro-Odinga counties, forcing election officials to postpone the exercise by 48 hours.
The election commission said more than one in 10 polling stations failed to open. Its chairman, Wafula Chebukati, tweeted overnight that 6.55 million ballots had been cast — just 34.5 per cent of registered voters.
By contrast, turnout in the August election was 80 per cent. The outcome is being closely watched across East Africa, which relies on Kenya as a trade and logistics hub, and in the West, which considers Nairobi a bulwark against militancy in Somalia and conflict in South Sudan and Burundi.
Police force
In the western city of Kisumu, police used tear gas and fired live rounds over the heads of stone-throwing youths.
Gunfire killed one protester and wounded three, a nurse said. In Homa Bay county next door, police said they shot dead one protester and injured another.
There were similar scenes in Kibera and Mathare, two volatile Nairobi slums. At least one person was shot in the leg, a Red Cross official said, and a church was firebombed. Legal challenges to the re-run are expected.