Uhuru Kenyatta’s hollow victory
The president’s landslide re-election is marred by a boycott
KENYA, according to its deputy president, William Ruto, “is not the type of country where you find a president getting 99% of the vote”. That statement, made on October 16th, was tested just a week later when Kenyans went to the polls for a re-run of the election on August 8th, which the country’s supreme court annulled. When the final results were announced by the electoral commission on October 30th, Uhuru Kenyatta, the incumbent, had won (again) with 98.3% of the vote. Yet the sweeping victory seems unlikely to bring to an end Kenya’s political and emerging economic crises.
This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline “Kenyatta’s hollow victory”
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