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Brief history of the general election in Kenya

How to get to the seventh round

08-08-2022 by Freddie del Curatolo

For the seventh time, the citizens of the Republic of Kenya will go to the polls tomorrow, 9 August 2022. Since multipartyism was introduced in 1992, every five years the country has been called upon to elect the president, parliamentarians, and since March 2013, after changes to the constitution that introduced 'devolution', i.e. the political and administrative division of Kenya into 47 counties, also governors and county council members.

Let us take a brief look at how it went in the past and how we prepare for the present.

1992: In a climate of understandable disorganisation and power always in the hands of the successor to the father of the fatherland Jomo Kenyatta, namely Daniel Arap Moi, the first multi-party election saw the division between the kikuyu (Kenyatta's ethnic group) and the kalenjin (Moi's ethnic group). Moi's deputy president, Emilio Mwai Kibaki, left office and founded the Democratic Party, running for president.

In the end, Moi won and was elected president. At the same time, by law, he will no longer be president for life, but will have a maximum of two terms to govern. The very composition of parliament will give him no chance to change the rules. In the Rift Valley areas between Nakuru and Eldoret, tribal violence breaks out between Kikuyu and Kalenjin, leading to over 1,200 deaths.

1997: Without any particular problems, Moi is re-elected for a second term again against Kibaki, but with less impact on the people. Opposition parties to the president's KANU last term gain more and more power in parliament.

2002: Moi hands over the sceptre of KANU to the young Uhuru Kenyatta, son of Jomo. But Kibaki, also supported by the Luo opposition led by Raila Odinga, forms the National Rainbow alliance and becomes Kenya's third president.

2007: The inauspicious election year with a close brush with civil war. Mwai Kibaki stands again for a second term and this time is supported by Uhuru Kenyatta, who has emerged from KANU. The opposition is led by Raila Odinga, who has formed his own party, the Orange Democratic Movement, with a Luo majority but Kalenjin representation and the strategic input of the upstart politician William Ruto. Odinga has a great grip on the poor people, partly because of Odinga's socialist past, and on the coast. After a controversial data transmission, Odinga denounced on 27 December 2007 that the vote was blatantly rigged.
In the weeks that followed, clashes killed more than 1,100 people and forced 600,000 to flee their homes in a country generally seen as a beacon of stability in Africa. The epicentre of the violence is the Rift Valley, where members of the Kalenjin and Luo ethnic communities, who mainly support Odinga, clash with members of the Kikuyu community, to which Kibaki belongs. On 28 February 2008, thanks to the mediation work of the UNO and its president Koffi Annan, who is personally involved, a power-sharing agreement is signed, under which Kibaki retains his post and Odinga becomes prime minister. In 2010, the International Criminal Court in The Hague opens an investigation for crimes against humanity into the post-election violence. Two years later, judges uphold the charges against Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto for their alleged role in the violence, but they are acquitted in 2014 and 2016 respectively.

2013: On 4 March, Uhuru Kenyatta, Kibaki's successor, wins the election over Odinga, in a climate of enforced non-belligerence that has a positive effect on the streets and squares. William Ruto decides to leave Odinga.
A year later Kenyatta becomes the first sitting president to appear before the International Criminal Court.

2017: At the end of August, Kenyatta is elected for a second term in office against his arch-rival Odinga, with William Ruto as vice-president. But lawyers from the ODM party challenge the results and denounce meddling in the technological data transmission system. In a surprise announcement on 1 September, the judges of the Nairobi High Court declared the poll results 'null and void' and ordered a re-run of the election within 60 days. The annulment is the first in history in Africa. However, Odinga does not stand for an encore of the October elections, denouncing new unclear situations. This time the appeal is not upheld. Kenyatta is re-elected in October in a vote characterised by a low turnout. Dozens of people die in the protests that follow, mostly in clashes with the police, especially in Odinga's strongholds in western Kenya and the slums of Nairobi. A few months later, in February 2018, the two political leaders stunned the country by shaking hands and declaring a truce for the good and peace of the nation. Kenyatta's Vice President leaving Vice President Ruto on the sidelines. The political alliance creates an inter-parliamentary movement to call for a constitutional referendum: the idea is to recreate the conditions of 2008 with a president and a prime minister to allow Odinga to finally be 'rais' and Kenyatta to retain power in another role. Ruto opposes this and founds his own party, United Democratic Alliance, effectively siding in opposition to his own government, in which he retains the position of 'separate' vice-president.

2022: Kenyatta is at the end of his second term, but his heavily Kikuyu-led Jubilee party has no de facto presidential candidate. The Azimio La Umoja coalition supporting Odinga has emerged and will compete with the Kenya Kwanza alliance in which, in addition to Ruto's UDA, the FORD party of former ministers Mudavadi and Wetangula, the second most populous ethnic Luhya in Kenya, converges.
With this situation, and continuous jumping of MPs and governors from one alliance to the other, we are set to vote on 9 August.

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