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      Kenya Starts to Digest the Result of a Contested Election

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      Vice President William Ruto was declared the winner, beating Raila Odinga, but Mr. Odinga has rejected the results A sharply divided electorate and uncertainty over how the apparent loser will react have roiled a nation pivotal to East Africa’s stability.KISUMU, Kenya — After a tumultuous political day in Kenya, the country on Tuesday began to come to terms with the reality of a new president-elect, William Ruto, a sharply divided electorate and uncertainty over how the election’s apparent loser would react to defeat in a nation pivotal for the economy and stability of East Africa.Mr. Ruto, who is currently the vice president, moved quickly on Monday in a speech and news conference to cement his new status after being declared the winner of last Tuesday’s election with 50.49 percent of the vote. He called for unity and said that there was “no room for vengeance” after a hard-fought campaign. He was greeted on Tuesday with a string of flattering newspaper headlines in Kenya.In a choreographed sequence of announcements, he also offered an olive branch to supporters of his main opponent, Raila Odinga, a former prime minister and opposition leader who had been thwarted four previous times in his attempts to win the presidency.But two major factors served to keep the electorate on edge. The first was a worrying split in the electoral commission, four of whose seven members said on Monday that they could not accept the outcome given the opaque nature of the vote counting. Their statement was made even before Mr. Ruto was pronounced the winner and is likely to feature in any court challenge to the election result.The second is Mr. Odinga’s silence. He is scheduled to hold a news conference later on Tuesday, but one of his leading aides described the election headquarters on Monday as a “crime scene.”Previous elections in Kenya, a country whose democracy is closely watched across Africa and farther afield, have led to orchestrated violence.After a 2007 election, at least 1,200 people were killed and about 600,000 others were forced to flee their homes. This time, religious and civic leaders, as well as much of the political class and the security forces, have emphasized the importance of accepting results and resolving disputes through the courts.“We are waiting for Baba to speak,” said Wycliffe Oburu, a 23-year-old supporter of Mr. Odinga, using the name by which the veteran opposition leader is often called. “We cannot lose this election.”Riot police officers patrolling Nairobi on Tuesday following the announcement of the results of Kenya’s presidential election.Thomas Mukoya/ReutersOn Tuesday morning the electoral commission formally declared Mr. Ruto president-elect in a special edition of the government’s Kenya Gazette, in a move apparently intended to underscore the legality of the results announced a day earlier.Many supporters of Mr. Odinga view Mr. Ruto and his appeal to Kenya, a country Mr. Ruto calls a “hustler nation,” with extreme suspicion. And for voters in western Kenya, an ethnic stronghold for Mr. Odinga where many people say that they have been excluded from presidential power since independence, the announcement on Monday of Mr. Ruto’s win stung.In towns along the eastern edge of Kisumu County in western Kenya, the soot of burned tires, as well as stones and sticks, were strewn across the streets on Tuesday, evidence of protests the night before. Large rocks and boulders could also be seen along a major highway that runs from Kisumu, a city on the shore of Lake Victoria, to Busia, which is near the border with Uganda.Protesters on that highway clashed with the police overnight, according to witnesses and young men crowded at bus stops and shops on Tuesday in anticipation of Mr. Odinga’s speech. There were no other reports of clashes, though an election officer in Embakasi, an area east of the capital, Nairobi, was found dead after going missing, newspapers reported on Tuesday. It was not immediately clear whether his death was linked to the voting.Key to any challenge to the result will be any evidence that the voting or the count was significantly flawed. Mr. Odinga challenged the result of the 2017 election, which he lost to Uhuru Kenyatta, in the Supreme Court, which ruled that the election should be annulled and held anew. Three months later, Mr. Kenyatta won again, though Mr. Odinga had asked his supporters to boycott the vote. In a move that spoke to the shifting alliances that are a hallmark of Kenya’s politics, Mr. Kenyatta supported Mr. Odinga this time around.A statement on Tuesday by the respected Election Observation Group, which comprises civic and faith-based groups, could serve to make Mr. Odinga’s task more difficult. The group did its own analysis of the published results and concluded that they were broadly accurate.The detailed statement concluded that the results the group had seen were “consistent” with those given by the electoral commission.Abdi Latif Dahir More

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      Kenya Elects New President, but Disputes Erupt

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      Kenya is often held up as a beacon of democracy in Africa, but as the latest election showed, it is not always pretty. Disputes started even before a winner was named.NAIROBI, Kenya — On a continent where military coups and rubber stamp elections have proliferated in recent years, Kenya stands out.Despite its flaws and endemic corruption, the East African nation and economic powerhouse has steadily grown into a symbol of what is possible, its democracy underpinned by a strong Constitution and its hard-fought elections an example to other African nations seeking to carve a path away from autocracy. But Kenya has just hit a speed bump.On Monday, a winner was declared in its latest presidential election, ending an unpredictable battle that had millions of Kenyans glued to their televisions and smartphones as the results rolled in. William Ruto, the president-elect, beamed as he addressed a hall filled with roaring supporters, lauding the “very historic, democratic occasion.”Vice President William Ruto of Kenya was named the winner of the country’s presidential election. Before the announcement, four out of the country’s seven election commissioners refused to verify the results.Tony Karumba/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut the losing candidate, Raila Odinga, rejected the result even before it was announced. A fracas erupted in the hall where Mr. Ruto had been speaking, and where the votes had been counted, sending chairs and fists flying. And four electoral commissioners stormed out, casting doubt on a result that is almost certain to end up in court.And so the election hangs in the balance, scrutinized not just at home but across a continent where Kenya’s rambunctious democracy is among those that are viewed as indicators of progress.“We do not have the luxury to look back, we do not have the luxury to point fingers,” Mr. Ruto said. “We must close ranks to work together.”It started out as a day of hope.Early in the morning, several thousand people began packing into the giant hall in a Nairobi suburb to hear the election results, following an arduous six-day count that had the country on tenterhooks.Mr. Ruto before the announcement of the results of Kenya’s presidential election on Monday.Monicah Mwangi/ReutersMr. Ruto and Mr. Odinga had been neck-and-neck throughout the count, sometimes separated by as few as 7,000 votes, according to unofficial news media tallies. Those razor-thin margins left many nervous: Although its democracy is robust, Kenya’s elections can be vicious, and its last three contests were marred by disputed results that led to protracted crises, court cases and street violence that in 2007 killed over 1,200 people.Chastened by those failures, the electoral commission had gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure a clean vote. Within 24 hours of polls closing last Tuesday evening, it had posted to its website images showing the results from nearly every polling station — over 46,000 of them.But as Wafula Chebukati, the chief electoral commissioner, prepared to announce the winner on Monday, one of Mr. Odinga’s top aides called an impromptu news conference outside.“This was the most mismanaged election in Kenya’s history,” Saitabao Ole Kanchory told reporters in a flurry of invective that described the counting center as “a crime scene” and called on those in charge “to be arrested.”Moments later, pandemonium erupted inside the hall.Supporters of Mr. Odinga, including Mr. Ole Kanchory, stormed the dais, throwing chairs on the floor and clashing with security officials brandishing truncheons. Foreign diplomats and election observers fled to a backstage area — but a choir that had been belting out gospel songs for much of the day continued to sing.A Kenyan police officer firing tear gas at protesters who set tires on fire in Kisumu on Monday.Yasuyoshi Chiba/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOnce the situation calmed, Mr. Chebukati emerged to deliver a short speech in which he noted that two of his commissioners had been injured in the melee — and others harassed, “arbitrarily arrested” or disappeared — before proceeding to announce the results.Mr. Ruto received 50.49 percent of votes, he said, against 48.85 percent for Mr. Odinga, a difference of just 233,211 votes but enough to avoid a runoff.In a speech that appeared intended to project authority and offer reassurance, Mr. Ruto thanked his supporters and vowed to work for the good of Kenya. He promised to set aside the bitterness of the campaign — and the chaotic scenes minutes earlier — to concentrate on the country’s flailing economy.“There is no room for vengeance,” Mr. Ruto said, flanked by his wife and by his running mate, Rigathi Gachagua. “Our country is at a stage where we need all hands on deck to move it forward. We do not have the luxury to look back.”Celebrations erupted in the streets of Eldoret, a stronghold for Mr. Ruto in the Rift Valley, where there was a deafening cacophony of horns, whistles and chants filling the downtown area.But in much of the country, his victory was overshadowed by a major development: Four of the seven electoral commissioners refused to verify the vote, defying Mr. Chebukati and decamping to a luxury hotel where they denounced “the opaque nature” of the final phase of the count.Those commissioners, it turned out, had been appointed by Mr. Odinga’s most prominent ally in the race, President Uhuru Kenyatta, who is barred by term limits from running again.Speaking to journalists a few hours later, Mr. Ruto dismissed their declaration as a “side show.” Under Kenyan law, he said, Mr. Chebukati alone is responsible for declaring the winner.“Legally, constitutionally, the four commissioners pose no threat at all to the legality of the declaration,” Mr. Ruto said.Supporters of Raila Odinga protesting in Kibera after Mr. Ruto was declared president-elect.Marco Longari/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesStill, the drama suggested that a day that should have signaled the end of the presidential contest might end up being just another chapter in the nail-biter race that has had Kenyans on the edge of their seats since the vote on Tuesday.The candidates were a study in contrasts.Mr. Odinga, 77, a leftist from one of Kenya’s most storied political dynasties, made his first bid for the presidency in 1997. He ran three more times, always losing, before trying again this year.Although he did once serve as prime minister, Mr. Odinga’s electoral defeats embodied the broader frustrations of his ethnic group, the Luo, which has never controlled the Kenyan presidency in all the years since the nation gained independence from Britain in 1963.Mr. Ruto, 55, the country’s vice president and a wealthy businessman, cast himself as champion of Kenya’s “hustler nation” — the disillusioned, mostly young strivers struggling to gain a foothold. He frequently told voters about his humble origins, including a barefoot childhood and an early career selling chickens on the side of a busy highway.That image contrasted with Mr. Ruto’s considerable wealth, which has grown during his political career to include a luxury hotel, thousands of acres of land and a large poultry processing plant.While the “hustler” pitch resonated powerfully with some Kenyans, others just shrugged. Just 40 percent of Kenyans under 35 registered to vote in this election, and the 65 percent turnout was sharply down from the 80 percent reported in the 2017 election.Mr. Ruto, center left, and his running mate, Rigathi Gachagua, center right, after the election results were announced.Tony Karumba/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe low turnout appeared to be a rejection of what many saw as a bad choice between candidates from their country’s discredited political elite.In voting for Mr. Ruto, millions of Kenyans overlooked the charges he once faced at the International Criminal Court, which a decade ago accused him of whipping up the storm of violence after the 2007 election that nearly pushed Kenya into a civil war.The charges included murder, persecution and forcing people to leave their homes, but the case collapsed in 2016. The Kenyan government — Mr. Ruto was vice president — engaged in what the court said was “witness interference and political meddling.”Mr. Ruto was running not just against Mr. Odinga but, in effect, against his own boss, Mr. Kenyatta, whom he accused of betrayal for backing Mr. Odinga.Instead of delivering votes for his chosen successor, Mr. Kenyatta suffered a humiliating rebuke from voters in his heartland, the Mount Kenya region, where ethnic Kikuyus rejected his allies across the board. Even at the polling station where Mr. Kenyatta cast his vote on Tuesday, Mr. Ruto scored a sweeping majority, the results showed.Debilitating economic troubles provided a bleak backdrop to Tuesday’s vote. The tourism-reliant economy has been battered in recent years, first by the coronavirus pandemic, then by Russia’s assault on Ukraine, which caused food and fuel prices to rise even more amid a global downturn.“Maize flour, cooking oil, cooking gas — everything is going up,” Abzed Osman, an actor who also works in tourism, said as he stood in line to vote on Tuesday in the Nairobi district of Kibera, Africa’s largest shantytown.By Monday evening in Kisumu County, one of Mr. Odinga’s strongholds in western Kenya, hundreds of protesters who had been eagerly awaiting the results began demonstrating and burning tires, witnesses said.Hours later a spokesman for Mr. Odinga, Dennis Onsarigo, said the candidate planned to address the nation on Tuesday.The police fired tear gas as people protested the election results in Kisumu.Ed Ram/Getty ImagesDeclan Walsh More

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      Your Tuesday Briefing: Kenya’s Next President?

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      Plus reports of Russian torture of Ukrainian prisoners and a longer sentence for Aung San Suu Kyi.Good morning. We’re covering uncertain election results in Kenya and a possible prisoner swap between Russia and the U.S.Supporters of William Ruto celebrated yesterday, despite uncertainty.Simon Maina/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA new Kenyan president?Kenya’s vice president, William Ruto, won the country’s presidential election, the head of the electoral commission said yesterday. The result came days after a cliffhanger vote.Ruto gained 50.5 percent of the vote, narrowly defeating Raila Odinga, a former prime minister, said a top official. That percentage is enough to avert a runoff vote, but a majority of election commissioners refused to verify the results. Here are live updates.An official, speaking on behalf of four of the seven electors, said the panel could not take ownership of the results because of the “opaque nature” of the election’s handling. Kenyan law allows for an election result to be challenged within one week — a prospect that many observers viewed as a near certainty.Profile: Ruto, who grew up poor and became a wealthy businessman, appealed to “hustlers” — underemployed youth striving to better themselves.Analysis: Kenya is East Africa’s biggest economy and is pivotal to trade and regional stability. The vote is being closely scrutinized as a key test for democracy in the country, which has a history of troubled elections. Rising prices, corruption and drought were top issues for voters.“He is very thin in the photo,” Darya Shepets, 19, said of her detained brother, pictured.Mauricio Lima for The New York TimesUkrainians share detention storiesHundreds of Ukrainian civilians, mainly men, have gone missing in the five months of the war in Ukraine.They have been detained by Russian troops or their proxies and held with little food in basements, police stations and filtration camps in Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine. Many said they had suffered beatings and sometimes electrical shocks, though Russia has denied torturing or killing Ukrainian civilians. The U.N. says hundreds have disappeared into Russian jails.One 37-year-old auto mechanic, Vasiliy, was seized by Russian soldiers when he was walking in his home village with his wife and a neighbor. That was the beginning of six weeks of “hell,” he said.Shunted from one place of detention to another, he was beaten and repeatedly subjected to electrical shocks under interrogation, with little understanding of where he was or why he was being held. “It was shaming, maddening, but I came out alive,” he said. “It could have been worse. Some people were shot.”Prisoners: Brittney Griner, the U.S. basketball star, appealed her conviction. A senior Russian diplomat spoke of a possible prisoner swap.Fighting: Russia has been firing shells from near a nuclear plant in an effort to thwart a Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kherson. The move has added to fears of a nuclear accident and has blunted Ukraine’s progress. Here are live updates.Economy: Ukrainian factories are moving west, away from Russian bombs, causing a land rush.Aung San Suu Kyi was forced from power and placed under house arrest in February 2021, after the military took control. Aung Shine Oo/Associated PressAung San Suu Kyi faces 17 yearsA military-appointed court in Myanmar convicted Aung San Suu Kyi on new corruption charges yesterday.The verdict adds six years to the ousted civilian leader’s imprisonment — she is already serving 11 years on half a dozen counts — for a total of 17 years. Still ahead are trials on nine more charges with a potential maximum sentence of 122 years. At 77, the Nobel Peace laureate and onetime democracy icon has spent 17 of the past 33 years in detention, mainly under house arrest.Yesterday’s charges centered on land and construction deals related to an organization she ran until her arrest. Defenders say they are trumped up to silence her. In recent weeks, a Japanese journalist and two well-known models have also been detained.Conditions: Aung San Suu Kyi is kept by herself in a cell measuring about 200 square feet (about 18 square meters). Daytime temperatures can surpass 100 degrees Fahrenheit (about 38 Celsius), but there is no air conditioning.Context: An estimated 12,000 people are in detention for opposing military rule. Many have been tortured or sentenced in brief trials without lawyers. Last month, the junta hanged four pro-democracy activists. It has promised more executions.THE LATEST NEWSAsiaChina recently deployed its largest-ever military exercises to intimidate Taiwan and its supporters.Aly Song/ReutersBeijing announced new drills around Taiwan yesterday after U.S. lawmakers visited. It is also laying out a forceful vision of unification.Oil prices fell to their lowest level in months yesterday, after signs emerged that China’s economy was faltering.As coronavirus fears and restrictions receded, Japan’s economy began to grow again.Bangladesh raised fuel prices more than 50 percent in a week, the BBC reports. Thousands protested.Shoppers tried to escape an Ikea store in Shanghai on Saturday as authorities tried to quarantine them, the BBC reports.The PacificAnthony Albanese, Australia’s prime minister, said he would investigate reports that his predecessor, Scott Morrison, secretly held three ministerial roles, the BBC reports.The government of the Solomon Islands is seeking to delay its national elections from May 2023 to the end of December that year, The Guardian reports.Australia found a red panda that had escaped from the Adelaide Zoo, The A.P. reports.World NewsOf 41 people who died in a fire at a Coptic Orthodox church in Cairo, 18 were children. Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s former adviser, has been told that he is a target of the criminal investigation in Georgia into election interference.Iran blamed Salman Rushdie for the attack on his life, but denied any involvement. In 1989, Iran’s leader ordered Muslims to kill the author.U.K. regulators approved a Moderna Covid-19 booster, making Britain the first country to authorize a shot that targets both the original virus and the Omicron variant.The last French military units pulled out of Mali yesterday after a major fallout with authorities.A Morning ReadIllustration by The New York TimesWorker productivity tools, once common in lower-paying jobs, are spreading to more white-collar roles.Companies say the monitoring tools can yield efficiency and accountability. But in interviews with The Times, workers describe being tracked as “demoralizing,” “humiliating” and “toxic.”ARTS AND IDEASA look back at partitionIndia became independent from Britain 75 years ago yesterday. But trouble was already afoot. Britain had haphazardly left the subcontinent after nearly three centuries of colonial rule and had divided the land into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.The bloody partition caused one of the biggest migrations in history, as once-mixed communities rushed in opposite directions to new homelands. As many as 20 million people fled communal violence. Up to two million people were killed.Now, 75 years later, nationalist fervor and mutual suspicion have hardened into rigid divisions. Despite a vast shared heritage, India and Pakistan remain estranged, their guns fixed on each other and diplomatic ties all but nonexistent.Visual history: Here are historical photos of the schism.Connection: A YouTube channel based in Pakistan has reunited relatives separated by the partition.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookDavid Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Rebecca Jurkevich.Try this broth-first, vegetarian take on a traditional cassoulet.What to WatchHere are five action movies to stream.World Through a LensStephen Hiltner, a Times journalist, lived in Budapest as a child. He just spent three months relearning Hungary’s defiant capital.Now Time to PlayPlay today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: “Word with four vowels in line, appropriately” (five letters).Here are today’s Wordle and today’s Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. Have you had a frustrating airline experience? “The Daily” wants to know.The latest episode of “The Daily” is about a U.S. tax loophole.You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com. More

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      Who Is William Ruto, Kenya’s New President Elect?

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      SAMBUT, Kenya — William Ruto spent his childhood on a plot of family land down an unpaved, narrow road in a quiet village in the Rift Valley, where he tended cows and helped till the field for maize and cabbage.But these days, Mr. Ruto, vice president of Kenya for close to a decade, wakes up in a giant mansion in a leafy suburb in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, where he holds meetings before flying, as he did on a recent morning, on a helicopter parked close to a covered pool.On Monday, the head of the electoral commission declared Mr. Ruto, 55, Kenya’s next president, but a majority of the commissioners refused to sign off on the count, citing a lack of transparency.The campaign of Mr. Ruto’s opponent, Raila Odinga, alleged that the count had been “hacked,” signaling that they would challenge the result in court. Late Monday, a spokesman for Mr. Odinga, Dennis Onsarigo, wrote on Twitter that the former prime minister planned to address the nation on Tuesday.Mr. Ruto’s campaign was a repeated appeal to Kenya’s “hustlers” — the youthful strivers who find themselves underemployed or unemployed and are itching to better themselves.His political rise almost came to an end following the bloody and contested 2007 elections. The International Criminal Court charged him with crimes against humanity, accusing him of whipping up violence that left more than 1,200 dead and 600,000 others displaced. The charges included murder, persecution and forcing people to leave their homes.But the case against him collapsed in 2016, as the government he served as vice president hampered evidence collection and engaged in what the court said was “witness interference and political meddling.”Mr. Ruto was born in Sambut village, a lush backwater about 12 miles northwest of Eldoret town in Uasin Gishu County. He raised sheep and cows, hunted rabbits with friends and attended school barefoot.His parents, strict Protestants who were leaders in the local African Inland Church, shaped his faith, pushing him to regularly participate in church activities and sing in the choir. From early on, Mr. Ruto showed his ambition, classmates, neighbors and friends said in interviews. He also stood up for them against bullies from other villages, they said.“The group that he was in always won the classroom debate,” said Esther Cherobon, who was his deskmate for four years. When a teacher threatened to cane the students for not knowing the answer to a math problem, “William almost always saved us,” she said.Growing up, Mr. Ruto pleaded with his parents to give him a small patch of their land to plant maize, his friends said. He sold chickens to make money long after his friends stopped doing so, after finishing high school. During his presidential run, Mr. Ruto tapped into this back story, presenting himself as one of the “hustler” Kenyans born into poverty.In the late 1980s, Mr. Ruto left to study botany and zoology at the University of Nairobi. Friends said they began noticing his focus on politics.In 1997, he challenged Reuben Chesire for the parliamentary seat of the Eldoret North constituency. Mr. Chesire had been a lawmaker, a powerful leader in the ruling party and a political stalwart of then-president Daniel arap Moi. But Mr. Ruto took a gamble and rallied his friends to crisscross the constituency on his behalf — and won.For all of Mr. Ruto’s political success, his home village remains underdeveloped more than a quarter century after he joined the government. Many there struggle to make ends meet, trading livestock or working as motorcycle taxi drivers.While Mr. Ruto has made some contributions to a school here or a church fund-raiser there, villagers said, the roads in the area are largely unpaved and many residents live in mud houses with no proper toilets.Mr. Ruto, by contrast, has constructed a brick house with a lush garden on his family’s compound and mounted a solar panel on the roof.Many of Mr. Ruto’s classmates hope his win will bring change.“He sold chicken and lived like us,” said his close childhood friend and classmate, Clement Kipkoech Kosgei. “Maybe he will bring change now.” More

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      Kenya on Edge as Media’s Election Tally Suddenly Stops

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      An attempt at radical transparency by the election commission, which uploaded raw ballot numbers online, led to divergent tallies. “People are so tense that they cannot even think straight.”NAIROBI, Kenya — As results poured in from Kenya’s cliffhanger presidential election, patrons at a restaurant in Eldoret, 150 miles north of Nairobi, the capital, stared up at six television screens on Thursday night that were showing the competing tallies by Kenyan news media outlets.With 90 percent of the votes tallied, the two main contenders, William Ruto and Raila Odinga, were only a few thousand votes apart. Each had about 49 percent of the vote.“People are so tense,” said Kennedy Orangi, a hospital nurse brandishing two cellphones, “that they cannot even think straight.”Then the tallies ground to a halt.Suddenly, millions of Kenyans, who had been glued to their televisions, radios and phones since Tuesday’s vote, were in the dark about the latest results of a neck-and-neck presidential race that has gripped the country, and is being scrutinized far beyond.On Friday, Kenyan news organizations gave various explanations for stopping their counts, including fears of hacking and a desire to “synchronize” their results.But to many Kenyans, it seemed they got cold feet and shied away from having to declare the winner in a high-stakes political battle that pits Mr. Ruto, the country’s vice president, against Mr. Odinga, a political veteran making his fifth run for the presidency.Now, voters have to continue their nail-biting wait. Officials say it will likely be Sunday, at the earliest, before the election commission can declare an official winner in the race — and to know whether either candidate can pass the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff.Electoral workers sit next to stacked ballot boxes after tallying finished in the Shauri Moyo area of Nairobi, on Friday.Ben Curtis/Associated PressThe stakes in this election are high for Kenya, an East African powerhouse with a recent history of turbulent elections. But it also reverberates beyond, as a litmus test for democracy at a time when authoritarianism is advancing across Africa, and the globe.“Kenya is an anchor for stability, security and democracy — not just in the region, or on this continent, but across the globe,” the embassies of the United States and 13 other Western countries said in a statement on the eve of the election.Seared by criticism of its failings in previous votes, the national election commission went to great lengths to make this an exemplary election.With a budget of over $370 million, one of the highest per voter costs in the world, the commission sourced printed paper ballots from Europe that had more security features than Kenya’s currency notes. It deployed biometric technology to identify voters by their fingerprints and images.The election commission “has done a very professional job,” said Johnnie Carson, a former U.S. ambassador to Kenya who is serving as an election observer. The biometric system “worked better than many people anticipated and has proved to be a useful model to build on.” More

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      In Kenya’s Elections, Young Voters Aren’t Turning Out, and Who Can Blame Them?

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      NAIROBI, Kenya — It was a sight to behold. Scores of young people, excited and expectant, gathered in Nairobi, chanting slogans and waving banners. But it was no entertainment: They were there for a campaign rally. In the months leading up to Kenya’s elections on Tuesday, the scene was repeated across the country. Here, it seemed, were the future custodians of the country taking a lively interest in the political process.But appearances can be deceptive. Some, it turned out, attended only on the promise of payment; others were paid to gather crowds from nearby. The actual enthusiasm of the country’s young, in contrast to the contrived air of engagement, is rather cooler. While those age 18 to 35 make up 75 percent of the population, only about 40 percent of people from that cohort have registered to vote.For some, this lackluster showing was evidence of worrisome apathy among the country’s youth. And sure enough, the early signs from Tuesday’s vote, where turnout across the board was low, at around 60 percent, suggest that the young stayed home in large numbers. But the charge of apathy misses the point. For many young Kenyans, refusing to vote is not a result of disinterest or indifference or even ignorance. It is instead — as Mumbi Kanyago, a 26-year-old communications consultant, told me — a “political choice.”You can see why. The two leading candidates in Kenya’s election, William Ruto and Raila Odinga, who are neck and neck in the early count, are both established members of the political class. They sit at the apex of a system that has failed to counter endemic youth unemployment, skyrocketing debt and a rising cost of living. In the eyes of many young people, expecting change from such stalwarts of the status quo is a fool’s errand. If the choice is a false one, they reason, better to refuse it altogether than collude in a fiction.On the surface, the two candidates seem pretty different. Mr. Ruto has branded himself a “hustler,” sharing stories about how he sold chicken by the roadside before his rise through the ranks to businessman and political leader — a back story that has earned him support from members of the working class, despite allegations of corruption. Mr. Odinga, by contrast, is political royalty. This is his fifth attempt to win the presidency, and his years of experience and exposure have earned him a kind of star power few can match.But the differences obscure the underlying similarities. Mr. Ruto, the newer candidate, has been deputy president for nearly a decade. Mr. Odinga is not only the country’s most famous opposition leader but has also been backed by the current president. Both candidates profess — often when animatedly addressing crowds — to care deeply about the electorate and its troubles. Yet in the eyes of many young voters, both belong to the same flawed system. They have no faith that either could seriously change things for the better.With good reason. In the dozens of conversations I had with young Kenyans, one refrain kept coming up: Politicians are out for themselves, not the country. In their view, self-interest and financial advancement are why politicians seek office. There’s something to it, certainly. The country regularly ranks poorly in corruption scores, and the two leading parties have members accused of graft and corruption in their ranks. The candidates like to talk about tackling corruption: Mr. Ruto has said he would deal with the problem “firmly and decisively,” and Mr. Odinga has branded corruption one of the “four enemies” of the country. But given their tolerance of dubious behavior, these promises fall flat.Kenya can ill afford such self-serving leadership. Parts of the country are experiencing what the United Nations has described as “the worst drought in 40 years” in the Horn of Africa, with some 4.1 million people in Kenya suffering from severe food insecurity. The cost of food and fuel, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has risen sharply. If that were not bad enough, the country — in part because of the government’s borrowing spree over the past decade — is heavily laden with debt, and inflation is at a five-year high. But in response to this troubling situation, the candidates have offered little more than bickering and bragging.In the absence of substantial policy, there could at least be symbolic representation of the young. But there too things are lacking. In 2017, Kenyans age 18 to 34 made up roughly 24 percent of all candidates. Less than a tenth of them won office, under 3 percent of the total. With such a tiny number of young people making the cut in electoral politics, who could blame the young, without representation or recourse to a more responsive state, for turning away?Still, young people in the country have found other ways to engage in political work — in community projects, mutual aid programs and social centers. One example is the Mathare Social Justice Center in Nairobi, which aims to promote social justice for the community living in Mathare, an area historically subject to police brutality, extrajudicial killings and land grabs.In this way, Kenyans are in step with other developments on the continent, where young people have sought alternative means to make their voices heard. For instance, young Sudanese have been bravely organizing and leading protests since October last year, demanding a return to civilian rule. In Nigeria, the young are at the forefront of a movement against police brutality that erupted with the enormous #EndSARS protests in 2020. And young people in Guinea played a huge part in the 2019-20 mass protests against the president’s attempt to run for a third term.Of course, the right to vote and participate in elections is a hard-won privilege, which many around the world are denied. But demanding that people vote, no matter how limited the candidates, is akin to exhorting people to joyously crown their oppressors. Citizens, after all, have the right to choose. And democracy does not begin and end at the ballot box.Samira Sawlani (@samirasawlani) is a freelance journalist and a columnist at The Continent.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Kenyans Await Results as Votes Are Counted in Presidential Race

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      Conflicting estimates of which candidate was ahead suggested a very tight race. Official results are expected to take several days.NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenyans waited anxiously on Wednesday for the results of their presidential election, the most closely fought in years, amid conflicting estimates of which candidate was ahead.Unofficial tallies by several Kenyan news outlets put William Ruto, the country’s vice president, who campaigned as the champion of Kenya’s “hustlers” — struggling young people — at least three percentage points ahead of his rival, Raila Odinga.But at least one major news organization put Mr. Odinga, a former political detainee who later became prime minister and is making his fifth run for the presidency, ahead by a similar margin in the balloting held on Tuesday.The conflicting estimates, based on preliminary counts of fewer than half of all votes, only confirmed that the race to lead Kenya, an East African powerhouse struggling through a grinding economic crisis, was too close to call.A campaign billboard for Raila Odinga and his running mate, Martha Karua, in Nairobi on Wednesday.Tony Karumba/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe period between voting and results is especially delicate in Kenya, where it has been a focus of vote-rigging accusations. The last three presidential elections ended in chaos after Mr. Odinga, the losing candidate in each of those contests, claimed to have been cheated. In 2007, that dispute triggered widespread violence in which over 1,200 people were killed.By Wednesday evening, 24 hours after polls closed, the national election commission reported that 99 percent of results from all polling stations had been electronically submitted — and were publicly available on the commission’s website.But those results came in the form of about 45,000 images, all handwritten tally sheets, which greatly slowed the task of determining the overall result. On top of that, electoral officials said it could take several days more to declare a winner because they must verify every electronic image against its paper original — a process that had not even begun on Wednesday evening.However, there is likely to be at least an unofficial result by Thursday, when news organizations are expected to have completed their private tallies of the entire vote.Ordinary Kenyans, meanwhile, waited with bated breath.A member of the electoral commission with a ballot box, on Wednesday in Kiambu County, Kenya.Fredrik Lerneryd/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn small towns throughout the southern part of the Rift Valley, where ethnic violence broke out after the 2007 election, markets and bus stops were nearly empty in anticipation of fresh trouble, and many businesses and restaurants were closed. Some people who had stayed behind said they had sent their families away to keep them safe and had remained behind to watch out for their properties. In Nakuru, the biggest city in the Rift Valley, motorcycle taxi drivers argued about who had won. In nearby Molo, young men clustered around a newspaper stand to scrutinize headlines about the race.And at her home outside Eldoret, Grace Nyambura flipped through the TV news stations and incessantly scrolled through her smartphone, checking for the latest indications of a result. She had sent her three children to stay in the city of Eldoret, fearing an outbreak of violence. “We cannot sleep,” said Ms. Nyambura, 36, who left her work tending a plot of avocados and maize plants to follow the news. “These results have taken over our lives,” she added. “We need to know how things will end.”Not everyone was so engaged. The head of the election commission, Wafula Chebukati, said turnout would exceed 65 percent — higher than the commission’s estimate of 60 percent on Tuesday, but still considerably below the 80 percent figure of the last election.Soaring food prices combined with disillusionment at the choice of candidates seem to have persuaded some Kenyans to stay at home. Although their images are strikingly different, Mr. Ruto, 55, and Mr. Odinga, 77, are both products of Kenya’s calcified political elite, which is notorious for its shifting alliances and endemic corruption.“I just feel like there’s no change,” said Florence Wangari, 30, an event planner in Nakuru who opted to catch up with some work on Tuesday, a public holiday, instead of “wasting time in line” to vote.Like others, Ms. Wangari pointed to the high unemployment rate and the government’s failure to deliver decent education and health care. It feels as if “there’s nothing that my vote is going to change,” she said.Even so, Mr. Ruto appeared to have broken through in some areas with his appeal to frustrated “hustlers,” a novelty in a country where political choices are often shaped by ethnic loyalties.Early results showed him polling strongly in the coastal region, where Mr. Odinga hoped to shore up his base, and, crucially, in Mount Kenya, the crucible of Kenyan politics.Using a projector to follow the counting of votes, on Wednesday in Nairobi.Thomas Mukoya/ReutersIn recent years, President Uhuru Kenyatta, who was barred by term limits from running again this year, had a falling-out with Mr. Ruto, his running mate in the last two elections, and forged an alliance with Mr. Odinga, his adversary in those contests.Mr. Odinga had been counting on that realignment to boost his support in the central Mount Kenya region, primary home of the Kikuyu ethnic group that includes Mr. Kenyatta and has dominated Kenyan politics for decades.But initial results showed Mr. Odinga polling disappointingly in that area — a blow to his electoral fortunes but also an implicit rejection of Mr. Kenyatta, whose extensive business interests in the area have become a source of popular resentment.As the unofficial counts progressed, prominent supporters in both camps claimed their candidate was emerging victorious. But others appealed to members of the public to band together and crowdsource a tallying effort — and help to figure out who their next president will be.Declan Walsh More