Winds of Change in Kenya :WardheerNews Editorial

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03 Apr 2013

After almost a weeklong tedious general election that was the first of its kind in Kenya’s modern election history, Kenyans felt the horrors of  political obscurantism, the dissipation of national cohesion,  and the callousness of their leadership mainly because of the overwhelming disputes and petitions that inundated the nation’s adjudication courts. Constituencies that have been embroiled in court litigations related to election irregularities have been enormously mindboggling for a nation that just subscribed to democratic governance after decades of misrule and authoritarianism. Petitions citing theft or destruction of ballots, concealment of voter registration papers, and obstruction and barring of voters have been out of the ordinary beginning with the presidential slot to that of senators, governors, Members of Parliament, and women and youth representatives.

Even after the chairman of the Independent Electoral and Border Commission (IEBC), Ahmed Issaack declared Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta to be Kenya’s fourth president, the powerful Coalition for Reform and Democracy (CORD) headed by Raila Amolo Odinga, filed a petition citing fraud and other forms of election irregularities. In a communiqué to the media, Raila claimed that he was not fighting to be declared president out rightly through malevolent designs. Instead, he claimed to be seeking the restoration of the faith of Kenyans in the electoral process through constitutional dispensation.

Regardless of the election irregularities, Kenyans, instead of taking the law into their own hands as in the 2007 election when violence engulfed a good productive part of the nation, this time around, they took to using media ballistics. The nation’s twitterati and Facebookati seemed to be enjoying freedom of press and of expression, at least, by taking to the internet to hurl expletives at each other and voice their deepest concerns. The recent presidential election has been an election that made nations in the Eastern Bloc laugh out loud while those in the Western rim seemed to have had grievances as they felt
dumbfounded and bewildered after Raila Odinga, the man they had in mind, failed to garner the presidential slot.Continued