As a country, we are faced with plethora of uncertainties. Kenyans flocked to the polling stations on 8/8/2017 to vote among other others, a presidential candidate. After a long day in the queues to exercise their democratic right, vote counting began in earnest. As votes trickled and Kenyans were glued to their Tvs and Radios, Raila Odinga who was the biggest threat to President Uhuru Kenyatta retaining the coveted seat told the nation that he had once again been rigged. This has moved the country in a state of confusion and fear, with the opposition candidate earlier stating that seeking a court redress will be the last thing he will do.
Luckily, the former Prime Minister swallowed his pride and turned to the court. Led by senior counsel James Orengo, the petitioner's team fought a hard battle on the the floor of the Supreme Court and ultimately won the case in a historic ruling.
What followed was more confusion. IEBC was mandated by law to conduct a repeat election within 60 days. IEBC set the date to 17th October and later rescheduled it to 26th.
However, NASA as a coalition party won't take part until key changes in IEBC are made. A system they said is rot to the core. Coming up with list of what they called 'irreducible minimums' and backed it up with street protests that in some places turned violent with the police.
Fast forward, Raila Odinga withdrew from the race and IEBC went ahead to conduct an election on 26th October. Elections was suspended in some counties but Uhuru is leading with over 98% of the vote cast.
With Uhuru set to be announced as the winner, Raila forming a resistance movement, we are faced with more confusion. The former Prime Minister is also set to announce more actions that include boycotting goods and services that he said were associated to Jubilee, in a declaration to be made within this week. In addition to that, the opposition party wants a fresh election to be held within 90 days and with Jubilee insisting that no election will be held, terming it unconstitutional the country is at crossroads.
For the country to move on, we need the Jubilee and NASA top brass to come together and solve the current puzzle to avoid the country sleepwalking into a Halloween nightmare.
The Standard Group Plc is a
multi-media organization with investments in media platforms spanning newspaper
print operations, television, radio broadcasting, digital and online services. The
Standard Group is recognized as a leading multi-media house in Kenya with a key
influence in matters of national and international interest.
join