NAIROBI, Kenya
It’s D-Day in Kenya in what is expected to be a tightly contested presidential election as Deputy President William Ruto faces veteran opposition politician Raila Odinga.
Ruto, deputised by Mathira
Member of Parliament, Rigathi Gachagua, is making his first stab at the top seat and hopes to rise
against all odds to capture the presidency.
He has weathered many
political storms that have seen a majority of his allies purged by the ruling
party Jubilee from various parliamentary positions after falling out with
President Uhuru Kenyatta, who has placed his bet on Odinga and his running mate
Martha Karua of the Azimio la Umoja coalition.
Odinga is on his fifth, and
likely final stab at the highest office in the land after unsuccessful
attempts in 1997, 2007, 2013 and 2017.
Final opinion polls before the
elections released last week placed Odinga ahead of Ruto, but the Deputy President has
dismissed the numbers as fake.
Other candidates in the race
to State House are Roots party candidate George Wajackoyah and running mate Justina Wambui, who
have premised their campaigns on legalisation of cannabis, and David Mwaure Waihiga deputised by Ruth Mucheru on the
Agano Party ticket.
The two, however, hardly
register a blip on any opinion polls, leaving it a two-horse race between Ruto and Odinga.
Some 22,120,458 voters spread
across the 290 constituencies and 46,229 polling centres are registered to vote
in an election that has seen the highest number of candidates since
independence.
Four presidential candidates
is the smallest number since the return of the multiparty system in 1992, but
there are a record 2,132 aspirants eyeing the 290 National Assembly seats and
another 12,994 seeking the 1,450 County Assembly (MCA) positions.
Some 340 candidates have been
cleared to vie for 47 Senate seats, with 266 seeking gubernatorial positions in
the 47 counties, and another 359 eyeing the 47 Woman Representative seats in
the National Assembly.
Meanwhile, the Independent
Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) in the run up to the polls suspended
elections in four MCA seats following the deaths of candidates.
The four wards are South Gem
(Gem constituency) in Siaya County, Kyome/Thaana (Mwingi West constituency) in
Kitui County, Oloimasani (Emurua Dikirr constituency) in Narok County and
Utawala (Embakasi East constituency) in Nairobi County.
Today’s elections follow
intense campaigns featuring the two front runners for the presidency going
hammer and tongs at each other.
The transitional election is vital as it ushers in a
new era, with President Kenyatta concluding his second and final term, but
unlike his predecessor Mwai Kibaki, he is heavily rooting for his preferred
candidate, Odinga, much to the chagrin of the Ruto camp.
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