William Ruto, Kenya deputy president, has been declared winner of the country’s August 9, presidential election, defeating opposition leader, former prime minister, Raila Odinga.
Ruto garnered almost 7.18 million votes (50.49%) against 6.94 million (48.85%) for his rival Raila Odinga, according to Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) chair Wafula Chebukati.
The final official results were declared after days of delays in tallying votes from over 230 constituencies.
Ruto said promised to “run a transparent, open and democratic government. I want to promise all the people of Kenya — whichever way they voted — that this will be their government.”
“I want to tell them [opponents] that they have nothing to fear — there is no room for vengeance. I am acutely aware that our country is at a stage where we need all hands on deck to move it forward,” he added.
The laborious process towards making a declaration required that once votes were counted, returning officers must take a photo of the final tally sheet and send the image to both the constituency and national tallying centers.
With a vacuum of official results from the country’s electoral and boundaries commission, the media, political parties and civil society groups most of the time compiled their tallies using results declared at the more than 40,000 polling stations.
In 2017, logistical errors led the Supreme Court to annul the presidential result and ordered a rerun. Officials wanted to get it right this time.
The contest between Odinga, 77, and Ruto, 55, was very close as both camps fought hard to take over the presidency.
Odinga was making an attempt at the presidency for the fifth time. He lost the previous elections in 1997, 2007, 2013 and 2017.
Ruto has now become president at the first attempt on the ticket of the Kenya Kwanza political alliance.
He had built a power base among the country’s largest ethnic group, the Kikuyu, despite not being from the community himself.
For some political analysts, like Martin Andati, the closeness of the contest speaks volumes about the voter’s maturity and the growth of the Kenyan political system.
“We are a matured democracy. We had an election the process was free and fair: you don’t have people fighting each other anymore. People are going about their own business they way it happens in matured democracies,” Andati told DW.
Despite this progressive picture Andati talked about voter apathy was already rife before the election, particularly among the country’s youth, who form the majority.
There was a lower voter registration trend among Kenya’s youth. Instead of an expected 6 million, only 3 million young people were registered.
Angela Ambitho, CEO of research organization Infotrak, told DW that many young people were undecided on who to vote for.
“The weight of the undecided would probably have affected turnout as well, these might be the voters unlike many of us want to understand how you are going to deal with the cost of living, they want to understand policy,”Ambitho said.
According to the IEBC, about 60% of the 22.1 million registered voters cast their ballots. On the contrary, turnout was nearly 80% in the previous election in 2017.
Kenya’s population of over 55 million people includes more than 40 ethnic groups. Divisions among some of the biggest communities have caused election-related violence in the past.
Andati said this time round ethnic lineage didn’t play much role in how peopled voted.
“Our polling politics this time round was not tribal. That is a major mark,” he said, stressing key political groupings are now more ideological in form and character.
Going into the election, outgoing President Uhuru Kenyatta — who had reached his two-term limit — endorsed Odinga after falling out with his deputy Ruto.
Kenyatta’s backing of Odinga did not significantly damage Ruto’s votes in some constituencies considered the stronghold of Uhuru Kenyatta as Ruto won votes from the Kikuyu community in the Mount Kenya region.
Ruto had campaigned on what he called a “bottom-up economic model” that will channel government funds into sectors that have the potential to generate the most jobs.
He had pledged to invest at least 500 billion Kenyan shillings (more than $4 billion) in farming, which employs more than 40% of the labor force, and in small businesses.
Odinga’s manifesto, on the other hand, vowed to “fight corruption in all its forms.”
He promised to fast-track reforms and strengthen anti-graft institutions.
Odinga also pledged to enact a monthly stipend of 6,000 shillings for the poorest households and help Kenya’s 47 counties develop manufacturing capacity for at least one product.
Many Kenyans, though, appeared less than enthused by these campaign promises as they remained frustrated by rising prices of commodities and corruption, forcing some not to even bother to vote.
