[dropcap]P[/dropcap]resident Uhuru Kenyatta has been declared President-elect with 7,483,895 votes after the disputed presidential election held on 26th October 2017. This despite elections not having taken place in four counties, and as more than 12 million voters countrywide boycotted the polls in line with a call by NASA leader Raila Odinga.
Fresh polls were ordered by Supreme Court on 1st September after it annulled the re-election of President Uhuru Kenyatta on 8th because of what it termed as irregularities and illegalities.
Despite that, the process has not been without suspicion and accusations, with critiques pointing fingers at the issue of voter turnout, with the chairman and the commission giving conflicting numbers. The chairman had earlier estimated the turnout to be 48%, which he later conflicted through a tweet saying it was 6.5 million voters.
Political frustrations
He later revised the turnout to 33%, with international media estimating it at 27%. He, however, could not substantiate the conflicting information, saying that someone was working on the numbers. However, during the declaration the chairman revealed that the voter turnout was 7.6 million, a 38.8% of the total registered voters.
Before the polls, Mr Chebukati had said he could not guarantee Kenyans free, fair and credible polls with the prevailing environment. However, he later made a u-turn, stating that the issues had been addressed. One of the IEBC commissioners, Dr Roselyn Akombe, resigned citing political frustrations within and without the commission, fleeing to US where she worked with the United Nations before joining the commission.
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The commission was later thrown into a turmoil when the rival candidate to President Kenyatta, Raila Odinga announced withdrawal from the race, saying that the issues that led to the annulment of the August polls had not been addressed. IEBC still retained him on the ballot, claiming that his withdrawal was not procedural neither legal. He got 73,228 votes.
HERE IS A GLIMPSE OF THE RESULTS
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So what happened?
In the results, President Uhuru mysteriously retained the vote count in Nairobi county in the disputed repeat presidential polls as compared to the August polls. He has garnered a total of 779,463 votes as compared to August’s 791,291 votes, a difference of 11,828 votes.
In the August polls 1,636,778 turned out to vote in Nairobi out of 2,251,929 registered voters according to the IEBC. In the repeat polls, 799,161 voters turned out to cast their ballots, reflecting 35.5% of the total registered voters in the county.
Generally, NASA leader Raila Odinga enjoys slightly greater support in Nairobi as compared to President Uhuru. In the August polls, Raila got 828,826 votes in Nairobi, beating President Uhuru with 40,000 votes.
The same trend is seen in counties such as Embu 215,518 (231,350), Nakuru 638,721 (638,721) Kiambu 916,463(912,588) and Kericho 270,927 (272,974). Other Jubilee affiliated counties had slight variations as compared to August polls.
In Vihiga county, President Kenyatta lost almost half of the votes he got in the August poll, getting 9,847 as compared to August’s 18,275 votes.
