A Kenyan man listens to news on a radio in Nairobi's sprawling Kibera slaum yesterday as the country awaited the results of mondays elections
Nairobi. Kenyans and the rest of the world continued with their anxious wait yesterday for results of Monday’s presidential election.
Results that had been trickling in since polls closed on Monday evening showed a tight race between Mr Uhuru Kenyatta of the Jubilee Alliance and Cord’s Raila Odinga.
By 6.15pm yesterday Mr Kenyatta had 2,735,353 votes, equivalent to 53.49 per cent, against Mr Odinga’s 2,145,721 (41.96 per cent).
Expectations were that the whole results would be known in a matter of hours given the first ever use of the Electronic Results Transmission (ERT) System in the Kenyan elections. To make matters worse the rate of spoilt votes gave an impression that this year’s Kenyan General Election is going to be a long wait.
By yesterday evening more than 320,000 votes, out of 5,213,327 votes counted, had been rejected by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC).
Analysts said the high rate of spoilt votes could lead to a runoff between the two contenders Mr Kenyatta and Mr Odinga.
Poll results delayed further after the system developed a hitch at around midnight forcing a lengthy delay and stagnation of visualization of the results from counties.
IEBC CEO James Oswago explained that the hitch had been occasioned by a low disk space in one of its servers.
To resolve the problem, IEBC’s engineers have added the disk capacity of the affected server, Mr Oswago told reporters.
The temporary collapse of the results transmission system caused anxiety after IEBC stopped relaying the Presidential results for hours.
The Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (Cord) had to calm down its supporters and urged them to wait for the announcement of the final outcome of the March 4 poll by the electoral commission.
Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka, running mate in the Cord ticket, however, warned the main competitors in the Jubilee Coalition against premature celebration.
“We note with worry that there are those amongst our competitors who have not resisted the temptation to engage in premature celebrations that are neither based on data or fact,” said Mr Musyoka at a news conference in Serena hotel on Tuesday. IEBC chairman Ahmed Issack Hassan also calmed down the public, saying the commission had about 48 hours to announce provisional results and seven days to announce complete results.
Peter Kenneth was the first presidential candidate to concede defeat in the presidential contest yesterday saying he will respect the will of voters.
The Electronic Results Transmission involved a mobile device that was used by each presiding officer to enter the data into a specially developed mobile phone application that transmitted data to the central tally centre in Nairobi.
The system was expected to enhance transparency and trust in the General Election. It would also allow graphical reporting of provisional results data at the tally centres.
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