Why Kenya’s election is going down to the wire

It was Raila Odinga’s to lose

Elections in kenya tend to veer between emotional extremes. The one in 2002 was
joyful as voters swept an opposition candidate to the presidency for the first time. A
disputed poll in 2007 was horrifying: perhaps 1,400 people were killed in its aftermath.
The latest, on August 9th, has unexpectedly turned into a nail-biter.
Opinion polls in the days before the election suggested that Raila Odinga, a veteran
opposition leader making his fifth run for president, would stroll to victory with a lead
of six to eight points over William Ruto, the deputy president. Cynical sorts, influenced
by Kenya’s history of iffy elections, reckoned that even if Mr Odinga lost, the
establishment would fiddle the count in his favour. Both assumptions seem to be wide
of the mark.
In 2017 the electoral commission muddled things so badly that the Supreme Court
ordered a re-run. Chastened, it has conducted this vote admirably. Mindful that delays
arouse suspicion, the commission published screenshots of results forms filled in by no
less than 81% of its 46,229 voting stations within seven hours of the polls closing. This
step has allowed for much greater public scrutiny of the counting process. It will surely
make it harder for the loser to cry foul.
Although the official result could yet trigger violence, the smoothness of the process so
far bolsters Kenya’s reputation as east Africa’s most robust democracy. As strongmen
elsewhere butcher constitutions to remain in power, Uhuru Kenyatta has become
Kenya’s third president in a row to respect a two-term limit.
Despite Kenya’s improving electoral performance, its political system seems to be
ailing, corroded by a self-serving and unaccountable ruling class. If anyone had seemed
to stand valiantly outside it, Mr Odinga was the man. In previous elections he ran as the
main opposition candidate, being beaten into second place each time in contests that did
not always look free and fair. This time he changed his tactics by allying himself with
Mr Kenyatta.
It seemed like a winning strategy. Mr Odinga, in effect, gained the benefits of
incumbency. The harassment his supporters once experienced at police hands was
visited on his opponent’s instead. Above all, the president’s endorsement was expected
to give him the support of the Kikuyu, Kenya’s largest ethnic group.
Mr Kenyatta holds the most famous Kikuyu surname. His father, Jomo, was an anti-
colonial hero who became Kenya’s first president. Yet for all his pedigree, the president
has singularly failed to deliver to Mr Odinga the Kikuyu vote. Provisional results
suggest that he has won a measly 20% of the vote in Kikuyuland.
Mr Odinga’s failure to win over the Kikuyu, which has turned what should have been a
coronation into a tight race, is not the only surprise in this contest. Perhaps more
startling is the success of Mr Ruto in winning votes in Kikuyuland, seeing that the
International Criminal Court in The Hague charged him with instigating attacks in
which hundreds of Kikuyus were killed after the elections in 2007. (Mr Ruto has denied
wrongdoing and the court has since suspended its prosecution.)
Mr Ruto’s success among the Kikuyu can be attributed partly to the disappointment
many feel about how the president acquitted himself in office. In particular, Mr
Kenyatta has struggled to shake off perceptions that he faced a conflict of interest since
his family has huge commercial interests, encompassing everything from dairy farming
to tourism and banks. “We are ruled by the richest man in the country and yet we are
still poor,” says Mwangi Githinji, a lorry driver in Gatundu, the Kenyatta family’s home
town.
If Mr Ruto wins it will signal a momentous shift in Kenya’s politics, which have long
been sullied by ethnicity. Mr Ruto has campaigned to persuade Kikuyus to forget about
the past by tapping into fresh grievances. Presenting himself as the champion of the
poor, he won support from have-nots across the country. For the first time, a Kenyan
election has been fought—and may indeed be won—as much on class as on ethnic lines.