Wednesday, January 02, 2008

On the elections

Parliamentary Outcomes:

New faces: Nemesys Warugiongo-slayed the corrupt giant who goes by the name Murungaru. Murangaru withdrew something like Ksh25m in the last week to target certain Kieni locations to no avail. Warugongo is known as Warungu wa Sufuria due to his work with women groups and the like.

Monda beating Nyachae who had always said he would leave the Bunge in a coffin.

Youthful faces
Its good to see Cecily Mbarire finally get a seat. I don't understand why Njoki hasn't done the same.

Comical Battles:
George Thuo vs William Kabogo
According to a friend in Juja, whereas Kabogo's shilling buried his opponents in the 2002 elections (I recall Stephen Ndicho, one of his opponents became a pastor not long after this). This time every Ksh1,000 he dropped was matched by the same from the CitiHoppa's MD. This, Michuki and "scientific manipulations" sent him home.
Evangelist Margret Wanjiru vs Maina Kamanda
This one started very early and roped in a certain Kamangu who wanted the reinstatement of his conjugal rights. Margaret lost her beau, but gained Starehe for Jesus. Maina Kamanda has seen off many in the past including Jimnah Mbaru, Kiruhi Kimondo, but just as he
had amassed the resources to fight, along came somebody even richer than him. Juja road was full of
Margaret's posters.

Njenga Karume vs Stanley Githunguri:
While many opted for younge or at least new faces, in Kiambaa they recycled their MPs bringing back Githunguri. In a bid to shave off 70yrs from his age, Githunguri nicknamed himself "Stano" and this seems to have worked.

Unfortunate outcomes:
Nderitu Gahachagua lose in Mathira: His CDF was rated the 2nd best in the country, he excellently articulated issues to his constituents, but it was not enough to overcome the KSh1,000 given to many households by Ephraim Maina of the "Cowboy Contractors" fame. Engineer Ephraim as he calls himself, even had the audacity to have his agents bribing voters as they queued to vote.
Westlands & Kamukunji fiasco: Gumo robbed in daylight, again. In one polling station as an example, Betty Tett had 224 votes but only 17 were recorded and on it went. In Kamukunji, I am fairly sure Simon Mbugua took the seat because the Muslim vote was spilt between Ibrahim Ahmed and the ODM-K guy. The rest was details which unfortunately were obscured when they started counting the Presidential.


Kalembe of TIP is no-more, which is a loss to the comedy wing of Bunge.

The presidential Outcome:
As of Friday night, I was confident the 1m gap between Kibz and RO would be closed because around 600k votes from Central hadn't come in. I sensed problems when I saw the Westlands numbers. For parliament, Gumo had 35k, Betty 24k and the other guys around 5k. However for the presidential votes, RO had 45k, Kibz 35k and Kalonzo 5k. Several others showed the same discrepancies between the parliamentary and presidential tallies. After a tiresome day on Saturday dealing with ODM and PNU domos, ECK's Jack Tumwa (he should have been chair), announced that they (alongside 2 agents for each of the 9 candidates) would retire for the evening and audit all 210 results. This should be the starting pt of any subsequent enquiries. A recount will be difficult to do given the irregularities in RO/Kibz strongholds and subsequent likely ballot paper manipulations. I believe ODM can wait for Bunge to open and do a vote of no confidence.


Some suggestions for future elections are:
  1. Civil elections not be done alongside the other two
  2. ECK not to read out results in press conferences, just put them on a presentation
  3. Only ECK results to be announced in the media (unless the media have noted a different set of results being announced in the polling stations). There were 5 TV stations each with a different set of results.
  4. Its an election not war

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