Period 5/6: Kenya's Election

The questioning of the legitimacy of the initial vote were fair in their argument. Justice Philomena Mwilu was was quoted by CNN saying “the IEBC's refusal to provide access left the court no choice but to accept the petitioner's claims that the IEBC's IT system was infiltrated and compromised, and the data therein interfered with, or IEBC's officials themselves interfered with the data." Though one could say that the cry for reelection was due to people not getting the results they wanted, there was more evidence, or should I say the lack there of, that backed their pleas for reelection and called together the justices to make their decision. On the other hand, the argument could be made that there were only two justices present to make the ruling on the reelection but in the end this was all done in a very hasty and unorganized matter despite attempts to make things as civil as possible.Regardless of this the current president of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta, won both elections and those who rioted for reelection in support of Raila Odinga were put down one final time. Unfortunately, the dangers of rioting came through and lives were lost, starting out at twenty four people at the first outbreak and the numbers continued to grow.
When reading this, especially the CNN article in which most of my notes are sourced, I found it to be similar to the current event we did on the Catalonia Independence piece. In both cases, though in very different situations, there were people unhappy and trying to achieve change in a democratic manner. Unlike Catalonia, the people of Kenya had their ideas considered and accepted by their government. With both groups of people, it took rioting and other public displays to grab the attention of their government. In Catalonia, the people were turned down in their pleas for a peaceful vote and therefore went against the government's rule ultimately leading to violence and deaths. In the case of Kenya, the government was quick to react to the peaceful riots and provided as reelection, yet, riots still turned violent. This poses the question, is violence inevitable in situations where people are rioting? Is rioting the “gateway” to violence despite how it begins, peaceful or not?

The Kenyans have every right to be still be worried about these voting results. They will still be hearing the stories about people being “forced” to vote for Kenyatta, true or not, people will always be skeptical about it. The new voting system that was implemented into Kenya could be potentially very effective, but if there is someone with a gun there “forcing” you to vote for someone, it could still be swayed a certain way. Good news is, according to the CNN article, there were 400 election observers and they saw no form of manipulation. Going off of this, the Kenyans have no reason to worry, but this isn’t the case. There were multiple cases of Kenyan officers killing anyone who opposed the voting, or opposed Kenyatta. According to the CNN article, there were more than 50 people killed that opposed the voting and opposed Kenyatta. The fact that the Kenyan officers are killing Kenyatta opposers, before Kenyatta is even locked in as the winner, seems kinda sketchy to me, as well as to most Kenyans. There is a lot that could be still wrong with the voting and the Kenyans still have every right to be skeptical.

@makayla Do you think it's possible that Kenyatta had such a high voter popularity is because voters that originally voted for Odinga switched sides, that the swing voters thought Odinga's call for a boycott was ridiculous and did not want that quality in a ruler? If I was a undecided voter that did not have ties to either candidate, the protests would convince me to vote for Kenyatta because his actions seemed more level headed in the aftermath of the first election. Could the percentage also be so high because only Kenyatta's supporters showed up and the second election was so rash that many people couldn't go out and vote?

@olivia Girdwood I agree with you in your statement “What’s the big deal?” having to do with Kenyatta winning after Odinga dropped out, but a lot of the people are still going to be mad over Kenyatta winning because their boycotting the election didn’t do what they wanted it to do. They wanted the election to just not happen again i think, and because the government doesn’t revolve around them and it still went on, they are all agitated.

@ang, you pose and interesting question when it comes to correcting potential unfairness in Kenya's voting system. I found it quite suspicious that the "random" murder of Christopher Msando, an IEBC official, to be almost pushed to the side. This man was directly involved with the voting system and he just so happens to turn up dead right before a vote? I mean, come on, this sounds like the beginning of some terrible, political, Seth Rogan movie. Unfortunately, it seems as though it was taken just as seriously as if it were a movie. There were a lot of very unofficial and unorganized steps taken in this election and reelection. There weren't even all five justices present to make the choice of a reelection. The government and country seemed to all have this feeling of needing to rush this whole process. CNN interviewed another IEBC official who was quoted in saying "it needs to be resolved quickly but can it be resolved fairly?" I think that this perfectly sums up the point I am trying to make. Kenya was in a rush to decide if a reelection was called for due to unsure circumstances of the initial election. In this rush, they only made the situation more unstable and allowed more room for possible corruption of the voting system. To avoid this, the government shouldn't have rushed the way they did, and made quick decisions, especially under such circumstances. To avoid this in future voting, Kenya should set strict, specific, rules for counting votes. The government should then employ a group of people specially trained to reinforce such rules in the voting stations and in counting. There may still be room for corruption but there is lesser so with strict regulations and specially trained individuals.

@meghan, I found it interesting that your solution was that the Kenyan government should "be open about who murdered this official, when they find out, to shed light that it was not a supporter of Kenyetta trying to rig the election.", referring to the murder of the IEBC official. I can understand were you are coming from and, in some cases it is good for a government to be open and honest with its public. I can also understand why the Kenyan government would want to keep the details of the murder out of the public eye. Right now the pubic is already splitting into two sides, those in favor of Kennyatta and those in favor of Odinga. If word comes out that a Kennyatta follower was to blame for the murder, it could very possibly we be the spark these two different political sides need to start possible years of violence and rivalry. I think it is in the governments best interest to gather as much information and facts about this whole situation and keep a watchful eye on the stability of the public. Once the government has collected enough factual data on what did/didn't go wrong with the election poles and about the murder, and the public has gained back enough stability to handle such facts, then it would be appropriate for openness with the public. This is not to say that the Kenyan government should keep everything locked away from the public forever, just that now might not be the most appropriate time for such information to go public. It is all in how the government "plays its cards".