Kenya Police Hold Key to Election Result

All testimony offered so far from independent observers monitoring the Presidential elections in Kenya demonstrates that fraud has been committed on a massive scale. The casualties of the rigged counting of votes are not just the hundreds who have died in the ensuing brutal violence, but also Kenya's neighbours Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda, the regional intergovernmental organisation known as the East African Community and the fragile hopes that real democracy can cement itself in East Africa.

The media coverage of Kenya is tending to focus on the violence itself rather than what happened that lead to the brutality - election fraud amounting to a civilian coup. The head of the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK), Samuel Kivuitu, admits that there were problems with the counting of votes. He has also said that he was subjected to intense pressure by senior aides of President Mwai Kibaki to announce results as they were given to him, despite his own reservations. This all points to a rigged count to ensure Kibaki was returned to power. The EU Election Observation Mission in their interim report said that the elections were competitive and generally well administered. However the "tabulation" was marred by a lack of transparency in the processing and tallying.

Further investigation by East African journalists has uncovered more evidence of blatant fraud with the number of votes announced failing to tally with records at polling stations. Intriguingly the Kenyan Police are reported to have their own record of actual polling:


Daily Monitor investigations also indicate that ECK officials overlooked the fact that Kenyan police personnel deployed to guard all the 36,000 polling stations countrywide also kept a record of the voting and compiled an accurate record of the results, so that even if something happened to the ECK structures, the Kenya Police is in position to give the nation correct results of the polls. Sources say that the Kenya Police tally indicates a major difference from what the ECK announced.
The key to an accurate election result that might help bring about a just outcome and quell chaos in Kenya seems to rest with the very police who are struggling to contain violent demonstrations and growing tribal conflict.

The damage to democratic progress in East Africa cannot be overstated. Already the region has suffered a political crisis in Uganda in 2006 when President Museveni was accused of voting fraud in his re-election campaign. Now Kenya has an identical problem undermining any confidence in honest governance in East Africa. Museveni has compounded the disdain felt for him and angered many by being the only African leader to contact Kibaki to congratulate him on his "win". There are already calls for Museveni to withdraw his message. Rather than people warming to closer co-operation between Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi - which has had some calling for the countries to merge into one state called East Africa - the stolen election is having the opposite effect.

What makes matters all the worse is President Kibaki's assertion today that there is no trouble in Kenya that needs international mediation and that there is no need for the election result to be reviewed. And on top of that United States and the EU - supposedly bastions of democracy - to their shame are pressing all parties in Kenya to accept a compromise that is less of a fudge and more of an injustice, by recommending the establishment of a coalition government. This idea is supposedly in the democratic interests of Kenya. But those interests cannot be served by forming a government that was not the electoral will of the people. I wonder if the Americans would have been happy with a coalition government to satisfy Al Gore's supporters when President Bush was put in the White House? If not, why recommend it to Kenya?

Africa is a tragedy. It is a continent of political failure even in countries where there is basically peace. Only outside pressure will bring about real change. Time and again Africa's nations demonstrate their inability to accept the outcomes of democratic processes yet the rest of the world still engages with those who assume power using fraudulent or violent means. Until such people are completely isolated by the international community - which itself needs to become more democratic - and have their ability to plunder national resources and bleed their countries dry, there will remain an incentive for people like Kibaki, Museveni, Mugabe and others to use incumbency to make themselves leaders indefinitely. Kenya is the latest disaster but it will not be the last.


* Source - The Waendel Journal