At some this morning I receive the following e-mail from a friend who knows I am interested in African politics...
For those of you who do not know, Kenya had an election on Thursday. It will be in the media very soon. It has taken a turn for the worse. In fact, if I could have predicted a worse scenario, I would have been stumped to come up with a clusterfuck like what they have right now. Because you will have many media sources now barraging you, I just wanted to give you all a quick run down, since I've been glued to the media coverage, including watching Kenyan television live online (which is really cool - for the commercials) for the last few days.
Basically, and it's tough to make this basic, the election began with two major contestants. The incumbent, Kibaki, was down by about a million votes two days ago, with the challenger, Raila Odinga, leading promisingly from throughout the country. The president only seemed to garner support from his home Central Province. In the last 24 hours, the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK), has announced results that have put Kibaki suddenly in the lead by 200,000 votes. Despite riots and cries by the ECK's own officials that there was considerable rigging involved, including a 115% voter turnout (think about that) in one of the president's primary support areas, the ECK went ahead this morning and announced Kibaki the new president. His party was solidly defeated, with his VP and 20 of his 24 ministers having been defeated by the challengers, ODM, who took 100 parliamentary seats to the president's 20. [Last reliable report was ODM had 95 seats out of 210, but only 185 districts were reporting.] However, as soon as the election results were declared, only one station, the government station, was allowed to broadcast. They then immediately cut to an inauguration ceremony where Kibaki was immediately sworn back into power. A delay of maybe one hour between the results being announced and the president being sworn in. Despite all international election observers and and ECK itself admitting that there are serious problems with the vote counting and that there was serious fraud in regions supporting the president, Kibaki was officially sworn in.
What happens next? At least 10 different towns in Kenya erupt in flames and violence. Gikuyus (of the president's ethnic group) are being lynched around the country. Good friends of mine cannot go home because their neighborhoods are in flames. It gets worse - the government immediately ordered all live media broadcasts cut, forbid all reporting of politics (making political reporting therefore illegal in Kenya), and even phone interviews with Kenya. Hence, this email is revolutionary in a sense. I've been on the phone with Kenyans, who are living in an utter blackout, with no media broadcasts and gunfire and flames everywhere. And it's the middle of the night there. All opposition leaders, including Odinga and the other ODM leaders have reportedly been arrested. [Although now it looks like they may not have, although they have definitely been publicly threatened with arrest if they go through with their planned protest on Monday.] Nairobi is in fire. People are running out of food in their houses, stores have been looted, and nobody has money because banks are closed. My friends are mostly safe. Most are planning to flee to Tanzania as refugees if things get any worse.
[....]
...this is political violence, NOT TRIBAL. Although, unfortunately, people are apparently currently being butchered based on their ethnic background.
The U.S. State department has issued a statement congratulating the Kenyan people and Kibaki on the voter turnout and calling to stop to the unrest.
As the email, says current coverage has been spotty. The best I could find was on BBC.
Once again this is a sad day for the entire African Continent. Unfortunately this is not a rare occurrence throughout the continent. In my own country, Paul Biya, president since I've been alive, won stole another election. For those of us who see the potential of Africa and African people news like this is very confusing and frustrating. Leaders that brought the continent out of colonialism are now the same one that taking it back by decades because they do not want to leave power.
