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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

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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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      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