Kenyan Vice President William Ruto won Tuesday’s presidential election by collecting 50.49% of the vote, according to results released Monday by the country’s electoral commission.
His main opponent, former prime minister and opposition leader Raila Odinga, received 48.85% of the vote.
Quoted by Agence France-Presse, the president of the electoral commission, Wafula Chebukati, said that Ruto received more than 7.17 million votes, compared to 6.94 million for Odinga, for which he won one of the most popular elections. ferocious in Kenyan history.
Minutes before the results were announced, which came three hours later than expected, the deputy chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission of Kenya (IEBC) announced that four of the seven members of that body rejected the results.
Due to the opaque nature of the process. […] we cannot take responsibility for the results that will be announced,” said Vice President Juliana Cherera, flanked by three other commissioners, asking Kenyans for “calm”.
“People can go to court, so we ask Kenyans to be peaceful, because the rule of law will prevail,” he said, as tensions rose and fights broke out at the center where the protest is taking place. electoral commission (IEBC). .manage results.
Starting at noon, the national vote counting center began to fill with party representatives, observers and diplomats, who waited for hours for the announcement of the results under heavy police surveillance.
The commission had announced in the morning that the results of Tuesday’s presidential elections would be presented this Monday at 3:00 p.m. (1:00 p.m. in Lisbon).
Six days after 22.1 million Kenyans went to the polls, the country knows the name of the successor to Uhuru Kenyatta, who has served two terms since 2013 and was therefore unable to run again.
Although the country sees itself as an island of stability in an unstable region, the results of every presidential election since 2002 have been challenged, sometimes violently.
In 2007-2008, Raila Odinga’s contestation of the results led to intercommunal clashes that left more than 1,100 dead and hundreds of thousands displaced, the worst post-election clashes since Kenya’s independence in 1963.
This year, the IEBC is under increased pressure due to the Supreme Court’s annulment of the 2017 presidential election for “irregularities”, an unprecedented decision in Africa.
Source: Observadora
