Kenyan president leads challenger in partial vote results
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta led challenger Raila Odinga by a significant margin in partial election results, Kenya’s election commission said Wednesday.
The commission’s website showed Kenyatta with just over 55% and opposition leader Odinga with nearly 44% after votes were counted from more than two-thirds of the 40,833 polling stations. However, the commission did not release information about which constituencies had been counted, so it was unclear whether Kenyatta strongholds or opposition centers, or some combination, had yet to be tallied.
Authorities hope to avoid the post-election violence of a decade ago when ethnic divisions fueled unrest that killed more than 1,000 people.
Kenyatta and Odinga also faced off in the mostly peaceful 2013 election. Kenyatta won that contest with just over 50% of the vote; Odinga, who had served as prime minister since 2008, alleged voting irregularities but Kenya’s highest court ruled in Kenyatta’s favor by validating the results.
At: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/kenyans-choose-next-president-in-fiercely-contested-vote/2017/08/07/c8dfe5fc-7be7-11e7-b2b1-aeba62854dfa_story.html?utm_term=.6772ea1b3da9
Raila Odinga, and the incumbent (and more conservative) Uhuru Kenyatta
