Kenyans choose new president from familiar faces

Nairobi — Kenyans voted on Tuesday, forming long queues at ballot stations in the heartlands of presidential frontrunners Raila Odinga and William Ruto, while elsewhere turnout was dampened by widespread voter apathy and frustration.

Kenya is holding presidential, legislative and local elections as its citizens become increasingly exasperated at surging food prices and corruption.

Electoral commission figures show that many young people did not register to vote despite being fed up with widening inequality and lack of trust in candidates to fix the problems.

In some polling stations in the capital Nairobi, Garissa and Naivasha lines were shorter than in previous elections, although turnout could pick up later. By noon, turnout was just more than 30%, said electoral commission vice-chair Juliana Cherera.

Turnout in the last election was nearly 80%.

“Kenyans are tired of waking up early and voting for a government that doesn't care but we hope things will change,” said Joshua Nyanjui at a polling station in the town of Naivasha, about 90km northeast of Nairobi.

Nyanjui said that in the previous election he queued for more than four hours, but this time it took less than 30 minutes. Other voters in Naivasha complained of high prices and hunger.

Odinga and Ruto are familiar faces in Kenya. Ruto, 55, has been President Uhuru Kenyatta's deputy for nine years, but they have fallen out. Instead,  Kenyatta endorsed veteran opposition leader Odinga, 77.

The final four opinion polls published last week put Odinga ahead by six to eight points. Ruto dismissed them as fake.

Kenya is a stable nation in a volatile region, a close Western ally that hosts regional headquarters for Alphabet, Visa and other international groups. However, less than 0.1% of Kenyans own more wealth than the bottom 99.9% combined, according to Oxfam.

In the western city of Kisumu, a bastion for Odinga supporters, police had to disperse singing, dancing voters who spent the night at one polling station.

David Onyango, 34, had been queuing for nearly four hours, and the turnout was the biggest he had ever seen.

Near the Rift Valley town of Eldoret, Ruto’s political heartland, Gideon Mengech woke up at 3am to vote. “I am honoured to be here,” he said.

Logistical problems 

Some polling stations opened late and some biometric kits used to identify voters failed to work properly, Odinga said on Citizen Television. In Narok, some names beginning with certain letters were missing from lists.

The election commission allowed 238 polling stations to use a manual register of voters and extended voting time in those that had delays, it said.

On Monday it suspended two gubernatorial elections and two parliamentary races, citing ballot printing errors.

The winner of the presidential vote will have to tackle soaring food, fuel and fertiliser prices, which have hit Kenyans hard. Some voters wonder whether the next president will help.

Outgoing President Kenyatta has delivered an infrastructure boom, funded largely funded by foreign loans that will hang over his successors. He once said there was nothing he could do to tackle corruption.

Kenya's traditional ethnic voting dynamics may also dampen turnout. The largest ethnic group, the Kikuyu, provided three out of Kenya’s four presidents. This time, there is no Kikuyu candidate, although both frontrunners have Kikuyu deputies.

Ruto comes from the populous Kalenjin community in the Rift Valley, while Odinga's Luo ethnic group have their heartland in western Kenya.

Ruto has sought to capitalise on mounting anger among poor Kenyans, and wants to to provide loans for small enterprises.

Odinga, who competed unsuccessfully in four previous elections, promises to tackle corruption and make peace with political opponents. The 2007 and 2017 polls were marked by violence after disputes about alleged rigging.

To avoid a run-off, a presidential candidate needs more than 50% of votes and at least 25% of votes in more than half of Kenya’s 47 counties.

Provisional results were expected to start streaming in on Tuesday night, but an official announcement will take days.

Reuters