Aug 12, 2022 — Millions turn out to vote for a successor to incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta who is finishing up the second of two five-year terms.
The much-contested presidential race attracted four candidates with the current deputy president Dr. William Ruto and the opposition leader Raila Odinga being the two leading candidates.Â
The other two none-popular candidates are Professor George Wajackoyah of RPK and David Mwaure Waihiga of AGANO party.
Despite casting their votes, Kenyans have been left confused following different results that are being reported by local channels.
Unlike other elections where the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) tally the votes and distributes them to the media, this time they uploaded the raw forms on the public portal; and left them for the media, political parties and any other interested groups to download them, key in the data and do their own tabulations.
This has led to public frustration at the slow pace which was compounded by the fact that the three main media houses with the latest results on their TV stations and websites were projecting different tallies, adding to the confusion.
To add on to this confusion, the agents and propagandists from the two main political formations, Dr Ruto’s Kenya Kwanza alliance and Mr Odinga’s Azimio la Umoja coalition, went into overdrive, each claiming victory on social media and displaying their own tallies.
The IEBC is yet to announce any results as it is expected to wait for physical copies of Form 34-A, the results form from the polling stations, to be delivered to the National Tallying Centre for verification and computation.
To win the presidency, a candidate needs 50 per cent of the vote in general, as well as 25 percent in at least 24 of the 47 counties in the country.
At the time of this writing, the two leading candidates Deputy President William Ruto and Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga were leading on different media stations. Odinga is leading on NTV and Citizens but Ruto is also leading on KBC and KTN.
While DP Ruto is leading by a narrow margin with 49.7%, equivalent to 6, 480, 783, followed by Odinga with 49.6%Â or 6, 470, 791 on KTN Live Broadcast, Odinga is leading on NTV and Citizen TV by 49.48% or 6,484,774 and followed by Ruto with 49.12% or 6,437, 555 on NTV.
The popular Kenyan media stations, KBC, KTN, NTV and Citizen are reporting between 6, 100, 000 votes to 6,500,000 valid votes for each of the two leading candidates to have been casted, counted and confirmed; however, the IEBC is yet to confirm these results.
The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) confirmed that 14 millions Kenyans have voted and as such the winning candidate is expected to win by over 7 millions votes and the IEBC has a mandate of one week to announce the results.Â
Overall the election has been peaceful, transparent and fair as many governors, senators, MPs and Women Representative have accepted the results with many of the losing candidates accepting defeats and congratulating the winners; however, the final decisions will be made by the IEBC before Monday, August 15, 2022.
A few hiccups, here and there, were still being resolved at the time of this writing [5am, Aug 12, 2022]. For example in Starehe Constituency of Nairobi County, two form 34A were reportedly lost, which is delaying announcements of the winners and police were demanding arrest of responsible IEBC officials; however, the rest of Nairobi constituencies [16] had no issues and 13 of the constituencies are won by Raila Odinga’s AZIMIO Candidates leaving Ruto’s UDA with only 3 constituencies, according to the main media houses.
