My attempts to understand the events happening in the neighboring Kenya have left me more confused than enlightened. Kenya held its Presidential election on 8th August 2017, their electoral body, the IEBC declared the sitting president Uhuru Kenyatta as the winner with majority votes, the second runner-up Raila Odinga rejected the results and dragged the IEBC to court which ruled in his favor and nullified the elections on the account of “irregularities” and “illegalities”. The IEBC was ordered to conduct a fresh election within 60 days among other conditions. The IEBC in its wisdom chose to ignore the other 6 candidates and only feature the two warring parties on the ballots. A furious Uhuru and his running mate took to the streets to campaign and condemned the judges, Raila and anyone else for the ruling. they, however, said that they would comply with the courts’ decision and were willing to go into an election with the same IEBC who they should have blamed for their woes. Raila, on the other hand, continued to insist on reforms from the IEBC which were not forthcoming. the court had ordered the IEBC to allow Raila and his team access to their database which they refused to do to date.
A furious Uhuru warned that there would be amendments to the constitution, his jubilee party had the majority in parliament and immediately set out to make reforms in his favour one of which was to ensure that he got a win legally, it stated that in case one party withdrew from the election, the one remaining would be declared the President without necessarily going into polls. Raila, however, outsmarted him by withdrawing from the election a day earlier saying that he was not willing to participate in an election conducted by the same IEBC and that since the electoral body had refused to comply with the court decision and make reforms, he chose not to participate in elections.
Now one of the previous 8 candidates, Peter Aukot whose name was not on the ballot took the IEBC to court over this and the court ruled in his favor and ordered the IEBC to put his name on the ballot. IEBC chose to include the original 8 including Raila who had withdrawn in the ballot. All this happened with less that two weeks for the repeat elections to take place, bearing in mind that the other candidates had not had the time to campaign and canvas for votes.
By the close of business, there were 6 other petitions in court one seeking court to force Raila to participate in the election of 26th October, another seeking court to cancel the election since the IEBC did not hold fresh nominations in accordance with the law, there was a petition seeking the 26th October election a cancelled and Kenya placed under caretaker government.
Listening to the various lawyers being hosted on Kenyan TV stations would leave a layman more confused, they all seemed to be right and quoted articles, referred to previous laws to support their claims. The jubilee lawyers insisted on the election taking place with the same IEBC claiming that there was no time for reforms now, the NASA lawyers insisted that the election is canceled until the IEBC reforms. The business community was fed up and simply wanted an election to be held so that they can move on with their business. Whether the election takes place on 26th October is entirely up to the courts of law.
