The 2007 Kenyan General Elections

A lot has been said about last years elections but I have seen little analysis of the cold facts as presented. President Kibaki stands condemned of stealing the elections (Railas cow) by ODM and the international community at large. In typical kenyan fashion, much like the way the mobs ruthlessly deal with "accused criminals" in the streets of Nairobi, Kibaki has been stoned before his side of the story got a fair hearing. It has to be said though that the reason that the PNU side didn't get their story out is due to the ineptness of their PR department as well as being ill prepared for the ODM onslaught that was indeed very well choreographed and backed to almost a man by the international media and western governments. In fairness, PNU started well when they presented the case of how Kibaki won fair and square in the local dailies, but soon after they fell into deep slumber letting the highly discredited ECK fight their battles for them. The ECK at this point is like the boy who cried wolf too many times. Despite what they said making perfect sense, no one believes them any more.

Incidentally by refusing to go to court, ODM deprived Kibaki of this very fair hearing against the accusations leveled against him and the PNU brigade. ODM forced the whole debate into the public forum, where Mr. Salim Lone, outsmarted one Dr. Alfred Mutua in presentation of their case to the public.

Since the route to the courts was denied, the common mwananchi seeking to see through the maze of ODM propaganda is forced to do some own research of the commonly available data. I don't have access to the numerous infamous Form 16As, so the research I've done is based on the data available in the public domain. What are the facts and figures? First the ECK has finally published all the results on their Website, presidential, parliamentary and civic pertaining to the last general elections. However, I have noticed that at least one result has been changed over time. The parliamentary results from Embakasi. Initially there was a difference of 37 000 votes between the presidential and parliamentary race in that constituency, but with the updated version, the difference is only 5 000 votes or so. There is also a discrepancy with some numbers I've heard mentioned in the media and the results appearing on the ECK website. The total voter turnout for the parliamentary race in Nithi only adds up to about 78 000, while I've heard the figure of 95 000 being mentioned in the media. You'll remember that Nithi was one of the controversial results in the last election. Based on the figures provided on the site, it's possible to carry out a crude analysis by comparing voter turnouts in the 3 contests. Presidential, civic and parliamentary. The fact that there are significant discrepancies between the presidential and parliamentary tallies has been offered as proof of wide spread rigging by the Kibaki side. The fact of the matter is that when you go through all the results you'll find discrepancies on both sides of the divide including the following Raila constituencies where Kibaki got very few votes.

1.Kasipul-Bondo (3 055, Kibaki got 179 votes)
2.Kisumu Town West (3 949, Kibaki got 1,738 votes)
3. Kisumu Rural (3 941,Kibaki got 406 votes)
4. Rongo (3 158, Kibaki got 175 votes)
5. Nyatike (2 430,Kibaki got 321 votes)
6. Alego (2 980,Kibaki got 174 votes)
7. Migori (3 508, Kibaki got 1 533 votes)
8.Sigor (2 152, Kibaki got 1 625 votes)

and those are just the places where the presidential exceeded the parliamentary tally by more than 2 000 votes. There are a myriad of other Raila strongholds and where Kibaki hardly got any votes with discrepancies of 1 000+ votes. The common assumption is that the parliamentary tally is correct and the presidential tally was topped up at KICC. There are good grounds to doubt the accuracy of the parliamentary tally. Of the 3 races, presidential, civic and parliamentary, the parliamentary race was arguably the most competitive. Our MPs , graciously added to their salaries and this attracted a lot of contestants. Lots of contestants means a lot of agents in the polling stations and a lot of arguments and delays. There were quite a number of parliamentary races that were interrupted in one way or another, because apart from the heavy rewards, the contestants had spent quite some money in the race. Thus no one wanted to lose, especially in Nairobi where all the races were extremely competitive.

The discrepancies might also just be due to clerical errors. Not only were the last elections the most contested but the number of voters who voted rose by 4 million in comparison to the elections in 2002. Turnout was extremely high and the number of registered voters had also increased. One Analysis on the net that relies n the discrepancies to make a case for Kibakis rigging is one by KEDOF. Most of their analyis can be found here.

Finally the last case for rigging has been made by ODM which produced the evidence in one of the local dailies some time back. They claimed that results in 47 constituencies had been tampered with and provided information as to what results were announced at te constituency level and those read at KICC. Of the 47 constituencies, the number of constituencies IMHO, this evidence proves that there really is no evidence. It is highly lacking and questionable even by virtue of simple logic. Just a look at these 3 examples shows that ODM's case stands on extremely shaky ground.

JUJA:
ODM would have you believe that the turn out here was a mere ridiculous 33% and they back up with evidence which shows a form 16. The interesting thing is that the results shown on the form are from only 111 polling stations while JUJA: according to ECK has 231 polling stations.

Note there were 27 555 polling stations nation wide, which works to an average of 131 (27 555 Polling Stations (Info from ECK as well as European observer mission) / 210 constituencies) polling stations/constituency. The Average constituency has roughly 68 000 voters (14.29 million voters / 210 constituencies. Juja with 163 000 registered voters has more than twice the number of voters in an avereage constituency.

Results of Juja: Presidential Turnout 119 000 voters, Parliamentary Turnout about 114 000, Civic Turnout roughly 120 000.

KANDARA: According to ODM a turn out of 40%. Ridiculous. The Average turnout in Central province was about 80% give or take.

EMBAKASSI:
The difference between parliamentary tally and presidential tally here was about 37 000 (This has since been corrected and the magin has since reduced to anbout 5 000 votes difference. This is however the data that ODM was working with).
ODM argues that this difference was added to one Mwai Kibaki's total. They subsequently subtract this figure to bring Kibakis haul here to 34 000 votes. Note. The PNU and DP candidate had a combined total of 50 000 votes. Not to mention the myriad of PNU affiliates also running here (including David Mwenje).

Raila had 50 000 votes while the ODM man running here, one Melitus Mugabe Were (R.I.P)only had 35 000 votes. Clearly ODM wants to lower the votes coming from Central, and as Kenyans, our votes are no less important or valued than those in Nyanza. The idea is to weight the votes coming out of central which is nothing short of a subversion of democracy. One man one vote. ODM would rather have our votes count at only 50%.

In short when we dig deeper into the case of the all edged rigging we find nothing but rot. In the words of Jay-Z, We don't believe you, you need more people.