After a week of electoral uncertainty, due to technical glitches with Kenya’s electronic voting system, Uhuru Kenyatta is declared the presidential winner. However his main rival, Raila Odinga, vowed to challenge the “tainted election” in the Supreme Court.
President-elect Kenyatta is set to be tried at the International Criminal Court (ICC) over violence that followed the 2007 polls. He, and his running mate, William Ruto, are accused of fueling the communal violence that saw more than 1,000 people killed and hundreds of thousands forced from their homes. One of the areas where such violence occurred was the Kibera Slums, which was particularly tense as the country awaited a decision on who would be the 2013 presidential victor.
All week groups of mostly men gathered on the streets to talk politics and watch the ballot count on storefront televisions. Fear of possible violence caused some families to pack up their belongings and head “up country” (a term used to describe one’s ancestral homeland). Such fears proved to be unfounded as the vote remained peaceful. How Mr. Odinga now handles his supporters will determine whether his dispute stays in the courts or spills out onto the streets.
Disputes in Kenya tend to play along tribal lines. Mr. Odinga is a Luo and president-elect Kenyatta is a Kikuyu (Kenya’s largest ethnic group). In 2007 Kenya president Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu, defeated presidential candidate Odinga in a highly disputed election. Echos of such divisiveness came up on Friday when members of “Women for Peace” attempted to take their message to the streets of the Kibera Slums. They were forced to abandon the march after being warned they were approaching a block where they would be attacked by men who viewed them as partisan (representing the wrong tribe and presidential candidate). What began as a cheerful march with them singing songs of peace ended in dejection as they abandoned the march entirely. Their group is a coalition of women from different Nairobi slums: Kibera, Mathare, Huruma, Mkuru, Dandora and Korogocho.
While the mantra across Kenya is “amani” (peace), some campaigners are warning against a “peace coma” – a failure to address past injustices which would prevent Kenya from moving on. People say they will wait for the legal process to run its course. Some point to the new constitution and recent judicial reforms as a reason for the relative calm compared with five years ago, when Kibera was a flashpoint. But there are worries about the future. Many hope Mr. Kenyatta will uphold the new constitution and co-operate with the ICC, as he fights charges of crimes against humanity. Mr. Odinga hopes to save Kenya from the challenges of a Kenyatta presidency.
Additional work by Ric Francis may be viewed on his website http://www.ricfrancis.net.
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