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      Voting Is Over in Kenya’s Election. Here’s What Comes Next

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      The two front-runners for the presidency — one making his fifth attempt — said victory was within reach. But a dispute over the results seems inevitable, and the next phase could be turbulent.NAIROBI, Kenya — A wave of relief tinged with jubilation washed across Kenya on Tuesday as its hotly contested presidential election passed largely peacefully after months of bitter jostling and mud slinging. Supporters feted one of the front-runners, Raila Odinga, at his Nairobi stronghold, while his rival, William Ruto, praised the majesty of democracy after casting his ballot before dawn.But as the voting ended, a new battle was likely beginning.The close of polls saw Kenya’s election shift into a new and unpredictable phase that, if previous polls are a guide, could be rocky. Past elections have been followed by accusations of vote-rigging, protracted courtroom wrangling, bouts of street violence and, in 2017, a shocking murder mystery.It could take weeks, even months, before a new president is sworn in.“People just don’t trust the system,” Charles Owuiti, a factory manager, said as he waited to cast his ballot in Nairobi, the line snaking through a crowded schoolyard.Still, the corrosive ethnic politics that framed previous electoral contests have been dialed down. In the Rift Valley, the scene of prior electoral clashes, fewer people than in the previous years fled their homes fearing they might be attacked.A large crowd filled the streets in support of Raila Odinga as he cast his ballot in Kenya’s presidential election.Daniel Irungu/EPA, via ShutterstockInstead, Kenyans streamed into polling stations across the country, some in the predawn darkness, to choose not just their president, but also parliamentarians and local leaders. Among the four candidates for president, the vast majority of voters opted for either Mr. Odinga, a 77-year-old opposition leader running for the fifth time, or Mr. Ruto, the outgoing vice president and self-declared champion of Kenya’s “hustler nation” — its frustrated youth.“Baba! Baba!” yelled young men who crushed around Mr. Odinga’s vehicle in Kibera, on the outskirts of Nairobi and said to be Africa’s largest slum. They used his nickname, which means “father.” The septuagenarian leader struggled to keep his feet as he was swept into a polling station.Mr. Ruto made a show of apparent humility while casting his vote. “Moments like this is when the mighty and the powerful come to the realization that the simple and ordinary eventually make the choice,” he told reporters.But for many Kenyans, that wasn’t a choice worth making. The electoral commission estimated voter turnout at 60 percent of the country’s 22 million voters — a huge drop from the 80 percent turnout of the 2017 election, and a sign that many Kenyans, perhaps stung by economic hardship or jaded by endemic corruption, preferred to stay home.“Either way, there’s no hope,” said Zena Atitala, an unemployed tech worker, outside a voting station in Kibera. “Of the two candidates, we are choosing the better thief.”Anger at the soaring cost of living was palpable. Battered by the double-punch of the pandemic and the Ukraine war, Kenya’s economy has reeled under rising prices of food and fuel this year. The departing government, led by President Uhuru Kenyatta, sought to ease the hardship with flour and gasoline subsidies. But it can barely afford them, given Kenya’s huge debt to external lenders like China.No matter who wins this election, economists say, they will face harsh economic headwinds.William Ruto, the current vice president who is making a run for the top job, greeting supporters on Tuesday after voting in Sugoi, about 200 miles northwest of Nairobi.Brian Inganga/Associated PressThe critical question in the coming days, however, is not only who won the race, but whether the loser will accept defeat.It can get murky.Days before the last vote, in 2017, a senior electoral official, Chris Msando, was brutally murdered, his tortured body dumped in a forest outside Nairobi alongside his girlfriend, Carol Ngumbu. A post-mortem found they had been strangled.The death of Mr. Msando, who was in charge of the results transmission system, immediately aroused suspicion of a link to vote rigging. Weeks later when Mr. Odinga challenged the election result in court, he claimed that the electoral commission’s server had been hacked by people using Mr. Msando’s credentials.The election was eventually rerun — Mr. Kenyatta won — but the killings were never solved.The nadir of Kenyan elections, though, came in 2007 when a dispute over results plunged the country into a maelstrom of ethnic violence that went on for months, killing over 1,200 people and, some analysts said, nearly tipped the country into an all-out civil war.In one notorious episode, a mob set fire to a church outside the town of Eldoret, burning to death the women, children and older people hiding inside.Maasai waiting to vote outside a polling station at Niserian Primary School, in Kajiado County, Kenya, on Tuesday.Ben Curtis/Associated PressThe trauma of those days still scars voters like Jane Njoki, who woke up on Tuesday in Nakuru, 100 miles northwest of Nairobi, with mixed feelings about casting her vote.Her family lost everything in 2007 after mobs of machete-wielding men descended on their town in the Rift Valley, torching their house and killing Ms. Njoki’s brother and uncle, she said. Since then, each election season has been a reminder of how her family held hasty funerals in case the attackers returned.“Elections are always trouble,” she said.That bloodshed drew the attention of the International Criminal Court which tried, unsuccessfully, to prosecute senior politicians including Mr. Kenyatta and Mr. Ruto on charges of inciting violence.But the crisis also led Kenyans to adopt a new constitution in 2010 that devolved some powers to the local level and helped stabilize a democracy that, for all its flaws, is today considered among the strongest in the region.Waiting to vote early in the morning at St. Stephen School in the informal settlement of Mathare in Nairobi, on Tuesday.Luis Tato/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“Post-conflict societies rarely earn the right lessons, but I think Kenya did,” said Murithi Mutiga, Africa Program Director at the International Crisis Group. “It adopted a new constitution with a relatively independent judiciary that led to a more constrained presidency. The rest of the region could learn from it.”On Tuesday, unofficial results from the vote flowed in. The election commission posted tallies from polling stations to its website as they became available, allowing newspapers, political parties and other groups to compile the unofficial results.By midnight, the election commission website showed that 81 percent of 46,229 polling stations had submitted their results electronically. But those results had not been tabulated or verified against the paper originals, which analysts say could take a few days.The winning candidate needs over 50 percent of the vote, as well as one quarter of the vote in 24 of Kenya’s 47 counties. Failure to meet that bar means a runoff within 30 days.That could happen if a third candidate, George Wajackoyah — who is campaigning on a platform of marijuana legalization and, more unusually, the sale to China of hyena testicles, said to be of medicinal value — can convert his sliver of support into votes, denying the main candidates a majority.But the most likely outcome in the coming days, analysts say, is a court challenge.Any citizen or group can challenge the results at the Supreme Court within seven days. If the results are challenged, the court must deliver its decision within two weeks. If judges nullify the results, as they did in 2017, a fresh vote must be held within 60 days.In recent weeks, both Mr. Odinga and Mr. Ruto have accused the election commission and other state bodies of bias, apparently sowing the ground for a legal challenge — only, of course, if they lose.Both of the main candidates have previously been accused of using street power to influence elections.But most Kenyans desperately hope that the trauma of 2007 — or the grisly murder mystery of 2017 — are far behind them.Whatever happens in the coming days or weeks, many say they hope it will be resolved in the courts, not on the streets.Declan Walsh More

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      William Ruto: Self-Proclaimed Champion of Kenya’s ‘Hustler Nation’

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      William Ruto loves to tell of his humble origins — his barefoot childhood in the Rift Valley; his first pair of shoes at age 15; the time he scraped by selling chickens and ground nuts on the side of a busy highway.That story is at the heart of Mr. Ruto’s electoral pitch to what he calls the “hustler nation” — hard-working and ambitious young people who, like him once, deserve a better deal. “If you listen to Joe Biden, he’s speaking the same language,” Mr. Ruto said in an interview. “How do we bring the majority to the table, where their talents, energies and ideas are also part of the making of the nation?”But it’s not quite that simple. Although Mr. Ruto slams the outgoing government, he has been part of it for the past nine years — as Kenya’s vice president. And his days of penury are far behind: His vast business interests, acquired during his time in politics, include a 2,500-acre farm, a luxury hotel and a giant poultry plant.These days Mr. Ruto, 55, is more likely to travel by helicopter than in a “matatu,” the crowded minibuses used by the average Kenyan “hustler.”Contradictions abound on all sides in this mold-breaking election, and Mr. Ruto has brought a hard-charging, upstart energy to the country’s moribund elite politics.Even detractors concede that he is charismatic, hard-working and full of new ideas. His promises of “bottom-up” economics resonate with poor Kenyans who are still reeling from the pandemic and now grappling with soaring food and fuel prices.And he has promised to sweep away Kenya’s old political dynasties — embodied by his opponent, Raila Odinga, 77, and his political nemesis (and former boss), the departing president, Uhuru Kenyatta.“There is no doubt that William Ruto’s presidential campaign has wrong-footed Kenya’s political establishment,” David Ndii, an influential economist who is backing Mr. Ruto, wrote on the eve of Tuesday’s vote. “They did not see a mere hustler leading a reimagining of our politics.”Still, Mr. Ruto’s enmity with Mr. Kenyatta, a singular focus of his most vehement attacks on the campaign trail, has the feel of a vendetta. Critics point to that as an example of a ruthless style, if Mr. Ruto came to power, that could turn into authoritarian rule.Mr. Ruto dismisses those concerns, as well as the controversy over his indictment by the International Criminal Court, in 2011, on charges of stoking election violence four years earlier. The case collapsed in 2016 after Kenya’s government stopped cooperating with prosecutors.“The whole thing was a political charade,” Mr. Ruto said.His biggest challenge now might be apathy. A voter-registration drive earlier this year had a disappointing turnout, especially among young Kenyans who are at the core of Mr. Ruto’s campaign.So if he is to emerge victorious, analysts say, he needs his supporters to do more than hustle. They need to get out and vote.Abdi Latif Dahir More

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      Will 5th Time Be the Charm for Raila Odinga in Kenya’s Election?

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      Raila Odinga, the smiling eminence of Kenyan politics, has an admirable record of contesting national elections and a miserable record of winning them. Since his first presidential run 30 years ago, Mr. Odinga, 77, has been at the center of nearly every election, mostly as the aggrieved loser claiming to have been cheated of his rightful victory.Could this time be different? With the most recent polls showing Mr. Odinga in the lead over his rival, William Ruto, the big prize seems to be within his grasp. But Kenyan elections can be messy, unpredictable affairs, with few certainties — a lesson Mr. Odinga knows better than most.High office is in his blood. The son of Kenya’s first vice-president, and an avowed leftist, Mr. Odinga entered politics soon after returning to Kenya from his engineering studies in communist East Germany in the 1960s.He was detained without trial for six years after an unsuccessful coup attempt against Daniel arap Moi, Kenya’s longest-serving ruler, in 1982 — and arrested twice after. Once finally released, he led protests that culminated in Kenya’s first multiparty election in 1992 — although the first truly free vote would take another decade.He first ran for the presidency in 1997, and again in 2007, when a disputed result led to widespread violence that killed over 1,200 people. He tried again in 2013 and 2017, both times losing to Uhuru Kenyatta, Kenya’s outgoing president.Through it all, Mr. Odinga has remained defiantly present — the outsider who could command newspaper front pages; the rabble-rouser who cast himself as the champion of the marginalized; the loser who crowned himself as the “People’s President” after losing the 2017 vote.If he can win this time, victory will be more than a personal vindication; it will make him the first leader of Kenya to come from outside the Kikuyu and Kalenjin ethnic groups that have dominated power since independence in 1963. Mr. Odinga is from the fourth largest group — the Luo — who have long resented being excluded from power.An Odinga presidency would also make history through his running mate, Martha Karua, who would become Kenya’s first female vice president.But if Mr. Odinga, the perennial outsider, is finally on the verge of achieving his dream, he is doing it as an insider thanks to the so-called “handshake,” his contentious 2018 pact with President Kenyatta that ensured him the president’s backing in this race.Supposedly an initiative to heal Kenya’s political divisions, the deal was widely criticized as yet another elite pact. One of its major provisions, a plan to amend the Constitution, was struck down by the courts in March.Even so, in this election the “handshake” has earned Mr. Odinga precious votes from some of Mr. Kenyatta’s supporters, putting him one major step closer to the job he has coveted for decades. More

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      In the Kenyan Election, A Fierce Battle to Lead an African Powerhouse

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      Kenyans vote for a new president on Tuesday, ending a heated race that shows why, in a troubled region, the East African nation matters more than ever.KANGARI, Kenya — The helicopter swooped over the lush tea and coffee fields flanking Mount Kenya, Africa’s second highest peak, and touched down outside a small highland town where William Ruto, the self-proclaimed leader of Kenya’s “hustler nation,” stepped out.Mr. Ruto, a front-runner in next Tuesday’s presidential election, is pinning his hopes on what he calls Kenya’s “hustlers” — the masses of frustrated young people, most of them poor, who just want to get ahead. He delights supporters with his account of how he was once so poor that he sold chickens on the roadside, and with his spirited attacks on rivals he portrays as elitist and out of touch.“I grew up wearing secondhand clothes,” he boasted to a roaring crowd in Kangari, where farmers and traders crowded around his election vehicle, a canary yellow, blinged-out stretch S.U.V. “Every Hustle Matters,” read the slogan on its door.The odd thing is that Mr. Ruto has already been in power for the past nine years, as the vice-president of Kenya. And he has become a very wealthy man, with interests in land, luxury hotels and, perhaps fittingly, a major chicken processing plant.Contradictions abound in this Kenyan election, a blistering and unpredictable contest between Mr. Ruto, 55, and Raila Odinga, a veteran 77-year-old opposition politician who is making his fifth bid for the presidency, having failed in the first four. But the perennial outsider is now cast as the insider after striking an alliance with the man who for years was his bitter enemy — the outgoing president, Uhuru Kenyatta.Supporters at a Ruto rally in Machakos, last month.Yasuyoshi Chiba / Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDays from the vote, the race is a nail-biter — a sharp contrast with many other African countries, like Uganda and Mali, where once-high democratic hopes have given way to sham votes and military coups. To its Western allies, that underscores why Kenya matters more than ever. Since its first competitive multiparty elections 20 years ago, the East African nation has emerged as a burgeoning technology hub, a key counterterrorism partner, a source of world-class athletes and an anchor of stability in a region roiled by starvation and strife.Kenyans are enthusiastic voters, with an 80 percent turnout in the 2017 election (compared with 52 percent for the United States presidential race a year earlier); on Tuesday 22.1 million registered voters will choose candidates for six races, including president, parliament and local bodies.The vote comes at an anxious time for weary Kenyans. The pandemic and the war in Ukraine have pummeled their economy, which is straining under billions of dollars in debt for Chinese-built road and rail projects. In the north, a devastating four-year drought threatens 4 million people with starvation.But this race is less about issues than a titanic clash of personalities, of age against ambition — peppered with a steady stream of personalized attacks.Mr. Ruto, a charismatic and ambitious leader with a ruthless edge, mocks Mr. Odinga as “the Riddle man,” a dig at his tendency to quote folksy proverbs and riddles, and as a “project” of his ally, Mr. Kenyatta.Raila Odinga at a campaign rally in Kirigiti Stadium, in Kiambu, on Monday.Ed Ram/Getty ImagesMr. Odinga, a veteran leftist who estimates that corruption costs Kenya millions every day, has another word for his opponent. “The thief is?” he asked the crowd during a rally in Machakos, 40 miles from Nairobi, on a recent afternoon.“Ruto!” replied his supporters.Accusations that Mr. Ruto’s team is prone to graft (or, at least, more prone than its opponents) were bolstered by the courts last week when the High Court ordered his running mate, Rigathi Gachagua, to forfeit $1.7 million in illicitly acquired government funds. Mr. Gachagua, whose bank accounts were frozen by a government anti-corruption agency in 2020, is appealing the judgment, which he rejected as politically motivated.Mr. Odinga also faces accusations of unsavory compromise. The son of Kenya’s first vice-president, he spent most of his career on the opposition benches. He personalizes a sense of grievance among his fellow Luo, Kenya’s fourth largest ethnic group, who have never had a president.After weeks of neck-and-neck polling, the latest figures give Mr. Odinga a clear lead. He is boosted by the buzz around his running mate, Martha Karua, seen as a principled politician with a long record of activism who, if elected, would become Kenya’s first female vice-president.Supporters of Mr. Odinga’s party in Kisumu, on Thursday.Patrick Meinhardt/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOne wild-card is a third candidate, George Wajackoyah, who has captured a small but boisterous protest vote on the back of his proposals to legalize marijuana and, more outlandishly, to export hyena testicles to China (where they are said to have medicinal value).If Mr. Wajackoyah can hold onto his slice of the vote, as much as 3 percent in the polls, he could deny Mr. Ruto or Mr. Raila the 50 percent majority needed to win, and trigger a second round of voting 30 days later.One of the biggest forces in the race is not on the ticket. The current president, Mr. Kenyatta, turned politics upside down in 2018 when he struck a political deal known as “the handshake” with Mr. Odinga.The alliance ended an enmity between Kenya’s two great political dynasties that stretched back to 1969, when Mr. Kenyatta’s father, then president, imprisoned Mr. Odinga’s father, an opposition leader, for 18 months.But for many Kenyans, the handshake was little more than “the children of kings” doing a deal to benefit themselves, said Njoki Wamai, assistant professor of international relations at the United States International University-Africa in Nairobi.President Uhuru Kenyatta, turned politics upside down in 2018 when he struck a political deal known as “the handshake” with Mr. Odinga.Thomas Mukoya/ReutersMr. Ruto, stung by a perceived betrayal, built up his own base in Mr. Kenyatta’s political backyard in Mount Kenya, the ethnic Kikuyu-dominated area that accounts for about one-quarter of the Kenyan electorate.The vitriol between the two men is never far from the surface. “You have enough money, security and cars,” Mr. Ruto told a rally recently, addressing the president. “Now go home.”“Don’t vote for thieves,” Mr. Kenyatta told his supporters days later. “Or you’ll regret it.”One obstacle facing both candidates is apathy. Younger Kenyans in particular say they are turned off by the byzantine feuds, alliances and back room deals that preoccupy their leaders.Evans Atika, a barber from Nairobi’s South C neighborhood, fits the profile of a typical “hustler.” But having voted in 2017, he intends to stay home this time. “They’re all the same,” he said. “They lie. They made promises they can’t keep.”Kenya’s elections are among the most elaborate and expensive in the world. This one is expected to cost $370 million, using ballots with more security features than the country’s currency notes. But elections here have a history of going awry.Employees of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission arranging ballot boxes and election material at a tallying center in Nairobi, on Thursday.Baz Ratner/ReutersWidespread violence following a disputed result in 2007 led to over 1,200 deaths, displaced 600,000 people and triggered an International Criminal Court investigation into politicians accused of bankrolling death squads and fomenting ethnic hatred. Mr. Kenyatta and Mr. Ruto, were indicted with crimes against humanity.But by 2016, both cases had collapsed, following what one judge called “a troubling incidence of witness interference and intolerable political meddling.”Other Kenyan elections have resulted in courtroom disputes that ended with judges overturning the results. And days before the last poll, in 2017, a senior election commission official was found brutally murdered in a remote wood outside Nairobi.The case was never solved.This time, worries about widespread, election-related violence are lower, human rights monitors say. But in recent weeks, some residents in ethnically mixed areas, especially in the Rift Valley which saw the worst unrest in previous polls, have voluntarily moved to the safety of larger towns.Much will depend, though, on the final result. Kenya’s election commission has one week to declare a winner, although analysts expect that the losing side will lodge a legal challenge, prolonging the contest.One bright spot, amid the mudslinging, is the potential for a sea change in the corrosive ethnic politics that have dominated Kenya for decades. The shifting alliances mean that, for the first time, millions of voters are expected to cross ethnic lines, especially around Mount Kenya where, for the first time, Kikuyus will have to vote for a candidate from another group.“I love that man,” Michael Muigai, a self-identified “hustler,” said after the rally for Mr. Ruto in Kangari.Mr. Muigai, who is 22, is working construction on a Chinese road building project to make his fees for a deferred college placement. He said he didn’t care that Mr. Ruto is an ethnic Kalenjin, and shrugged off media reports linking him to corruption.“Past is past,” he said.Election posters in Nairobi.Baz Ratner/ReutersDeclan Walsh More

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      Beware of Dying Empires, an African Warns

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      Our regularly updated feature Language and the News will continue in the form of separate articles rather than as a single newsfeed. Click here to read yesterday’s edition.

      We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

      February 25: Dead Empires

      Perhaps the most lucid commentary on the Ukraine crisis came from the Kenyan ambassador to the United Nations, Martin Kimani. Addressing the UN Security Council earlier this week, Kenya joined the chorus of nations categorically condemning Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity as a prelude to a military assault. But unlike other nations, which have been framing their judgment only in terms of international law, Kimani proposed a measured reflection drawing on a much wider historical perspective than that of disputed territories in Eastern Europe. The experience of African nation-states, “birthed” as he reminds us in the past century, helps to clarify the crisis in Eastern Europe as just one more symptom of a pathology spawned by the Western colonial tradition.

      From Repeated Mistakes to an Unmistakable Message

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      The New York Times didn’t bother to mention Kimani’s speech. After all, who cares about Kenya or the historical insight of Africans? The Washington Post offered two minutes of video excerpted from the ambassador’s six-minute speech. It was accompanied by a single sentence of commentary that gives no hint of the substance of his remarks: “Kenyan Ambassador to the U.N. Martin Kimani evoked Kenyan‘s colonial history while rebuking Russia’s move into eastern Ukraine at the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 21.”

      Carlos Mureithi at Quartz Africa penned a fuller commentary that doesn’t quite get Kimani’s real point. He begins by describing the speech as “a scathing condemnation of the Russia–Ukraine crisis, comparing it to colonialism in Africa.” But it was much more than that.

      [embedded content]

      Kimani invited the Security Council to consider how the nation-states we have today were crafted by European colonial masters focused on perpetuating their own interests and indifferent to the needs and even identities of the peoples who lived in those lands and who woke up one morning to find themselves contained within newly drawn national borders. Kimani makes the surprising case for respecting those borders. However arbitrary in their design, they may serve to reign in the ethnic rivalries and tribal tendencies that exist in all regions of the globe, inevitably spawning local conflicts. But even while arguing in favor of the integrity of modern nation-states, he showed little respect for those who drew the borders and even less for the self-interested logic that guided them.

      “We must complete our recovery from the embers of dead empires,” Kimani urges, “in a way that does not plunge us back into new forms of domination and oppression.” The populations on the receiving end of colonial logic know that even dead empires, chopped down to size, can be sources of contamination. They have left a lot of dead wood on the path of their colonial conquests. Not only does dead wood tend to rot, but, if the vestiges of the past are not cleared away, those who must continue to tread on the path frequently risk tripping over it.

      Kimani evokes the specter of “nations that looked ever backward into history with a dangerous nostalgia.” He sees a bright side in the fact that an incoherently drawn map may have helped Africa avoid the worst effects of nostalgia. The real paradox, however, is that his description of dead empires applies to the two still breathing opponents who are facing off in the current struggle: Russia and the United States.

      In an article on the Russia–Ukraine crisis published on Fair Observer in December, Atul Singh and Glenn Carle highlighted Vladimir Putin’s obsession with a form of nostalgic traditionalism. They described it as “a reaction to and rejection of the cosmopolitan, international, modernizing forces of Western liberalism and capitalism.” Though Putin’s wealth is as legendary as it is secret and the Russian president appears to be as greedy as a Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, he seems possessed by a pathological nostalgia for the enforced order of the Soviet Union and perhaps even for the Tsarist Russia the Bolsheviks overturned a century ago. At the same time, Donald Trump’s campaign to “Make America Great Again” reveals a similar pathology affecting the population of the US. It’s equally a part of President Joe Biden’s political culture. The “back” that appears in Biden’s slogan “America is back” and even in “Build Back Better” confirms that orientation.

      In declining empires, the mindset of a former conqueror remains present even when conquest is no longer possible. Kimani alludes to this when he affirms that Kenya “strongly condemn[s] the trend in the last decades of powerful states, including members of this Security Council, breaching international law with little regard.” He accuses those states of betraying the ideals of the United Nations. “Multilateralism lies on its deathbed tonight,” Kimani intones. “It has been assaulted today as it has been by other powerful states in the recent past.” In other words, Putin is not an isolated case.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Kimani politely names no names. But the message is clear: There is blame to go all around and it is endemic. That is perhaps the saddest aspect of the current crisis. Sad because in wartime situations, the participating actors will always claim to act virtuously and build their propaganda around the idea of pursuing a noble cause. Putin has provocatively — and almost comically — dared to call his military operations a campaign of “demilitarization,” which most people would agree to be a virtuous act. We have already seen Biden call the various severe measures intended to cripple Russia’s economy “totally defensive.”

      Empires assumed to be dead are often still able to breathe and, even with reduced liberty of movement, follow their worst habitual instincts. The two empires that squared off against each other during the Cold War to different degrees are shadows of what they once were. But their embers are still capable of producing a lot of destructive heat.

      Why Monitoring Language Is Important

      Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

      In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

      Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

      Remember, Fair Observer’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Your Wednesday Briefing

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Latest Vaccine InformationU.S. Deaths Surpass 300,000F.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyYour Wednesday BriefingPoorer nations struggle to access a coronavirus vaccine.Dec. 15, 2020, 10:06 p.m. ETGood morning.We’re covering the gulf between wealthy and poorer nations for access to a coronavirus vaccine, new laws against civil liberties in Hungary and Brazil’s chaotic vaccine plan.[embedded content] Pillay Jagambrun, a Care home worker, received the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at Croydon University Hospital in south London last week.Credit…Pool photo by Dan CharityRich countries are first in line for new virus vaccinesThe world’s wealthiest countries have laid claim to more than half of the doses of coronavirus vaccines coming on the market through 2021, as many poorer nations struggle to secure enough. If all those doses are fulfilled, the E.U. could inoculate its residents twice, Britain and the United States four times over and Canada six times over, according to our data analysis.In the developing world, some countries may be able to vaccinate, at most, 20 percent of their populations in 2021, with some reaching immunity as late as 2024.In many cases, the U.S. made its financial support for the vaccine’s development conditional on getting priority access. The country is heading toward authorizing another vaccine this week, from Moderna.By the numbers: Britain has claimed 357 million doses in total, with options to buy 152 million more, while the European Union has secured 1.3 billion, with as many as 660 million doses more if it chooses.Credit…The New York TimesHere are the latest updates and maps of the pandemic.In other developments:A second wave has brought a new surge in infections to Sweden, leaving Stockholm’s emergency services overrun and forcing the authorities to recalibrate their approach.Russia has released additional results from a clinical trial of its leading coronavirus vaccine, Sputnik V, showing an efficacy rate of 91.4 percent. AstraZeneca opened talks this month about combining efforts.President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa announced new restrictions as the country entered a second coronavirus wave, with infections expected to rise over the festive season.The European Medicines Agency said in a statement that it would move forward a meeting to decide whether to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to Dec. 21 from Dec. 29.The new amendment would also effectively bar gay couples from adopting children in Hungary by defining a family as including a man as the father and a woman as the mother.Credit…Attila Kisbenedek/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNew laws in Hungary further erode civil libertiesThe Hungarian Parliament on Tuesday passed sweeping measures that curtailed the rights of gay citizens, relaxed oversight of the spending of public funds and made it more difficult for opposition parties to challenge Prime Minister Viktor Orban in future elections.The government justified its actions in a written explanation by saying that the Constitution “is a living framework which expresses the will of the nation, the manner in which we want to live.” Increasingly, “the will of the nation” is becoming indistinguishable from Mr. Orban’s own.Analysis: The new laws are cause for “grave concern,” said Agnes Kovacs, a legal expert. Over more than a decade in power, Mr. Orban has torn at the fabric of democratic institutions in pursuit of what he calls an “illiberal” state.Details: The legislation includes a constitutional amendment that would effectively bar gay couples from adopting children in Hungary by defining a family as including a man as the father and a woman as the mother. The amendment could also make it harder for single parents to adopt.Kenyan soldiers at their base in Tabda, inside Somalia, near the border with Kenya. As part of the African Union peacekeeping forces in Somalia, Kenya has more than 3,600 troops stationed in the country.Credit…Ben Curtis/Associated PressSomalia cuts diplomatic ties with KenyaSomalia severed diplomatic ties with Kenya on Tuesday, accusing the neighboring East African nation of meddling in its internal political affairs. The move came weeks before a crucial general election.“The federal government of Somalia reached this decision as an answer to the political violations and the Kenyan government’s continuous blatant interference recently in our country’s sovereignty,” said Osman Dubbe, the minister of information.Context: The move injects an additional note of instability into an already shaky region, after the U.S. announced plans to withdraw troops from Somalia — which some fear will motivate the Shabab militant group to escalate its offensive across Somalia and the Horn of Africa.If you have 5 minutes, this is worth itBrazil’s chaotic vaccine planCredit…Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesWith its top-notch immunization program and strong pharmaceutical industry, Brazil should be well-placed to curtail infections domestically. But political infighting, haphazard planning and a rising anti-vaccine movement have left the nation without a clear vaccination plan, our reporters found. Above, a vaccine trial in São Paulo this month.Brazilians now have no sense of when a vaccine will come. The coronavirus has brought the public health system to its knees and has crushed the economy. “They’re playing with lives,” one epidemiologist said. “It’s borderline criminal.”Here’s what else is happeningBig Tech: In a bid for tougher oversight of the technology industry, the authorities in the European Union and Britain introduced regulations to pressure the world’s biggest tech companies to take down harmful content and open themselves up to more competition.Uighurs: Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court will not investigate allegations that China committed genocide and crimes against humanity over the mass detention of ethnic Uighurs in the Xinjiang region, saying China is not a party to the court.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      in US Politics

      Laugh? We nearly all died – why my US failed state Twitter thread went viral

      by

      The chaotic US election has undoubtedly been the biggest story in the world in the last two weeks. Watching it unfold from over 13,000km away in Kenya, the election itself – the long queues, the delayed and disputed vote count, impugned credibility – was disturbingly familiar. Our own elections follow a near-identical pattern. The media coverage, not so much.
      Gone were the condescending tone, the adjective-laden labels and the expectation of violence and malfeasance so often applied to “foreign” elections. In its place was an easy familiarity and assumption of competence.
      The media did not feel it necessary to depict the US as a crisis-wracked, oil-rich, nuclear-armed North American country with armed terror groups roaming its ethnically polarized restless interior. But these were exactly the sorts of descriptors that have traditionally allowed western audiences to identify with and follow events in distant, “exotic” places. It seemed to me that the rest of us deserved the same consideration. And so I decided to offer this perspective in a Twitter thread

      gathara
      (@gathara)
      #BREAKING After days in barricaded presidential palace, US dictator, Donald Trump, hesitantly emerges to attend ceremony for fallen troops in coastal capital, Washington DC. Race is now on to get back to the palace before President-elect Joe Biden can sneak in and depose him.

      November 11, 2020

      Clearly, many across the globe felt similarly, given the response the thread has attracted. At last count, it had been viewed nearly 4m times, attracting more than 50,000 likes and nearly half as many retweets. And there was more than mere interest in the mechanics of what was happening in the US. There was a fair bit of joy at its expense.

      gathara
      (@gathara)
      #BREAKING Rumors – hotly denied by regime officials – are spreading that US dictator, Donald Trump, who has not been seen in public since he returned to the barricaded presidential palace days ago, may have fled the crisis-torn republic for asylum in an undisclosed country.

      November 11, 2020

      In 2016, the Republican candidate for president, Donald Trump, may have exaggerated somewhat when he declared: “The world is laughing at us. They’re laughing at us, at our stupidity.” No longer. As counting in the crisis-wracked North American state entered its 10th day, around the world it had become the butt of many jokes. After decades of enduring its hubris and condescension, many are happy to see the self-anointed “shining city on a hill” and self-proclaimed “greatest country in the history of the world” knocked down a peg or two.

      gathara
      (@gathara)
      #BREAKING As ruthless purge of disloyal elements within the country’s military continues, US Foreign Minister accuses opposition of rigging presidential elections raising fears corrupt regime of aging dictator, Donald Trump, will declare state of emergency and cling to power.

      November 11, 2020

      In truth, it has been a long time coming. For a long time, America has been to the world what Trump has been to America – a bull in a china shop. Rich, entitled, brash, over-confident and often downright stupid, since the end of the cold war the country has traipsed around the world, breaking stuff as it went, throwing its weight around, and playing fast and loose with cherished global norms. Its journalists and moviemakers (and president) rarely missed the opportunity to stress just what an uncivilized “shithole” the rest of the globe was and how much we needed the enlightenment offered by the Peace Corps.
      America always seemed surprised that other people did not necessarily appreciate being insulted or told how to live. Like Trump, it has had its enablers. Some, like the British, were true believers in its “manifest destiny” to rule and deliver the world. Others, like the French, were content to give their support while holding their noses.
      Like Trump, America’s successes were primarily economic and its monumental failures, in places like Vietnam and Iraq, cost hundreds and thousands of lives. It had a complicated relationship with the truth as exemplified by Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations, laying out the Bush administration’s rationale for war in Iraq. Like Trump it cozied up to dictators in Africa and gave a wink and a nudge to the apartheid regimes in South Africa and in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel.
      Inevitably perhaps, America’s excesses inspired a rival. Today, America finds itself as a bull in China’s shop. It has slowly been eclipsed in many areas where it was once dominant, especially in trade and lately in technology. And America has reacted much like Trump to the loss of its position as top dog – it is throwing a tantrum. From inciting a trade war to trying to wreck global alliances and treaties, to undermining the multilateral system, the US is showing that it will not go quietly into the sunset.
      Given all this, many around the world can be excused for feeling a little schadenfreude as the US is humiliated by an election that has ruthlessly exposed its inadequacies, and a president that has made a mockery of its claim to be the king of democracies.
      The election and four years of Trump have shown that far from being a paragon of democracy, the US has not only neglected its decaying democratic institutions at home, but has also incubated a dangerous authoritarianism. As the US fixes itself, the rest of us too need to reform the international system which for too long has operated on the mistaken belief that the US is what it claimed to be. The Trump presidency should be the wake up call we all need to build a better world.
      Patrick Gathara is a Kenyan political cartoonist, satirist and writer. Twitter: @gathara More