See the chaotic scenes as Kenya elects new president
By David Quinn
15 May 2012
An estimated 1 million people were on the streets of Nairobi—the capital of the East African state of Kenya—on Saturday, the fourth day of the hotly-contested presidential election. There were massive and violent protests in towns and cities across Kenya, with no shortage of candidates, from the incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta to the main opposition leader Raila Odinga and numerous others.
The Kenyan election, by far the most important in the country’s history, has seen a massive surge of voter registration. Almost 9.5 million have registered for the presidential vote, while about 11.5 million have registered to vote for the National Assembly race, which is seen as a key test for the Kenyatta-led alliance.
The current turnout for the presidential election, which is set for June 23, is almost half the official turnout figure of 47 percent, according to the election commission which announced the figures to a media briefing in Nairobi on Sunday.
President Kenneth Ruto, who is expected to become the second president in independent Kenya, announced Sunday that he will not accept the results of the vote, declaring, “My nation wants a new beginning.” Ruto, who has been in power since the country gained independence from colonial rule in 1963, will have his mandate to stay on as president extended through August, meaning he will be re-elected for another five years.
A spokesperson for the National Intelligence Service, which has been running a secret intelligence operation, confirmed to the Reuters news agency that it has monitored the Kenyan elections for months and that the agency had been working on a report on Ruto since late September.
According to Reuters, there are already signs that Ruto, who spent the first year of his five-year term in office working behind the scenes to subvert and undermine the independence of the country and the will of its people, is not ready to concede the election result.
Two days before the elections, Ruto had announced that the ruling party would go into the campaign to “strengthen our resolve and power.”
It is a measure of the desperation felt by the Kenyan people to oust President Kenyatta and ensure the election of Raila Oding
