For now, the Supreme Court has the fate of the country in its hands. Some have called upon Raila to abandon his legal challenge of the presidential results and simply accept what was announced. But such calls for the PM to abandon his case can only be characterised as selfish and not in the interest of those who take their right to vote seriously.
On the other hand, it’s critical for the courts to actually determine what exactly happened and hold accountable those who may be found to have contributed to the failure of the electoral body to deliver results free of the things complained about or alleged by those challenging the results.
Put another way, Isaack Hassan and his team must in the end answer the question, why would they spend billions of shillings on a system that they abandoned at the critical time for whatever reason they gave to resort to manual counting which the Kriegler Commission said was to blame for the 2007 mess. There are many other questions IEBC must answer but that’s for the courts and other relevant authorities to look into in the days to come.
At this point in time, all the court needs to determine is whether it’s true that there was massive rigging of the elections as Raila and Cord allege. While the court grapples with the monumental task of reaching a verdict, we can also glean some things from the disputed poll that may or may not be agreeable to all.
These are: To begin with, it’s abundantly clear rigging or not, tribalism is alive and well in Kenya. However, this is not the so-called ‘tyranny of numbers’ much heralded by a local political pundit as the key to Uhuru’s victory but dismissed by others as propaganda designed to psychologically prepare the country for the rigging Raila and Cord now say took place. Those dismissing the so- called ‘tyranny of numbers’ are not without an abundance of reasons:
First, the author of this ploy claimed at the time he unleashed his ‘tyranny of numbers’ that the Kikuyus and Kalenjin will vote as a bloc for Uhuru and Ruto instantly giving the duo 43 per cent of the vote going by the total number of registered voters.
This was an outcome only possible in the figment of one’s imagination because at the time and even through the last days before the elections, virtually all reputable pollsters were unanimous in predicting a “dead heat” between Raila and Uhuru, with Raila Odinga having a slim lead. In none of the polls did either candidate have more than 50 per cent of the vote.
Whenever you mention polls, two things immediately come into play—and this is a universal concept and fact: when they favour your position, view or candidate, they are marvelous; when they don’t they are unreliable, paid for or otherwise belonging to the trash.
But it’s a fact that Kenyan pollsters have accurately predicted the results of the 2002 presidential elections; the 2005 referendum; the 2007 presidential elections; and the 2010 referendum. As one analyst has put it, this is a track record of reliability which would be acceptable in any nation.
That being the case, it became apparent long before the elections that the “tyranny of numbers” was really nothing but a clever invention to psychologically prepare the country for rigging as many alleged because there is no way one could reconcile those ‘tyranny of numbers’ with the conventional polling data showing a close race between Raila and Uhuru. This is a fact that is actually conclusively established in the results from the actual poll of March 4—again, putting aside the question of rigging.
As the pollster Dr Tom Wolf of Ipsos Synovate put it, if one were to give Uhuru all the undecided vote going into the elections (about two per cent) and add to that the numbers for three marginal candidates, the best Uhuru could have had on election day would have been 49.5 per cent, yet the results IEBC announced show Uhuru at 50.7 per cent, begging the question where did those numbers come from, given it’s inconceivable all the undecided voters voted for Uhuru while and the three marginal candidates did not drop out?
It is also significant as Dr Wolf noted that if Ipsos Synovate results are compared with what IEBC results, every single result for the eight presidential candidates was within a margin of 1.26 per cent except for Uhuru. According to Dr Wolf, this was not a ‘tyranny of numbers” as earlier propagated by its originators but a ‘tyranny of turnout’ because as it turns out—again, putting aside the question of whether there was rigging, Uhuru did better in turn-out than did Raila, especially in their respective strongholds It’s, of course, unknown at this time what percentage of that turn-out was real and what was due to inflated or cooked up numbers as Raila and Cord contend, if any, but that’s obviously the issue before the court to determine.
That notwithstanding, there does rise an interesting question and that is, now that it’s clear the Kalenjin were voting almost to the man—the caution again about putting aside rigging, for Uhuru and Ruto, can Raila win the presidency without the Kalenjin vote if there is a run-off or re-run? The short answer is yes, he can.This is because as the pollster Wolf noted, Raila had more registered voters in his 20 strong counties than Uhuru did. It turns out what made the difference minus the question of rigging, was voter turn-out; voters in Raila’s strongholds did not turn out as did those in Uhuru’s. Were Raila to have voters in his strongholds turn out in near the proportions Uhuru’s did then it would be the battle of the titans and Raila will win simply because Uhuru has limited areas he can whip up the frenzy compared to Raila whose support spans across the country. In that scenario, the Kalenjin vote becomes less significant for Raila but obviously the only life-line for Uhuru
That notwithstanding, it still remains the case that Raila and Cord have not made a convincing case in Kalenjinland that they are the coalition that will seriously address the needs of the community, including historic injustices related to land.
CREDIT: THE STAR
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