The head of Kenya’s electoral commission on Monday declared William Ruto the winner of the presidential election against Raila Odinga, after six days of waiting and the surprising rejection of the results by part of this independent body.
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Wafula Chebukati announced that incumbent Vice President Ruto collected more than 7.17 million votes or 50.49% of the vote versus 6.94 million or 48.85% for Mr Odinga, winning one of the closest elections in the country’s history have.
William Samoei Ruto will become Kenya’s fifth president, succeeding Uhuru Kenyatta, who after two terms has not been allowed to run for a third since 2013.
After a generally peaceful campaign and poll, followed by an endless six-day wait that tested Kenyans’ patience, he overtook Odinga by 233,211 votes.
Mr. Ruto becomes the first member of the Kalenjin ethnic group to be elected president in twenty years, succeeding two presidents of the Kikuyu community.
At 55, the ambitious Ruto has struggled hard in recent years as he was sidelined by an unexpected alliance between Kenyatta and Odinga in a bid to burnish his sulphurous reputation.
Born into one of the country’s first fortunes, this child of a modest Rift Valley family fondly remembers his story of the “self-made man” who started from scratch and declared himself the spokesman for the “resourceful” people against power, the political Dynasties typified by Kenyatta and Odinga.
By midday, the Electoral Commission’s national counting center, on which the eyes of the whole country are fixed, filled with party officials, observers and diplomats who, under heavy police surveillance and entertained by choirs, waited several hours for the announcement.
Minutes before the announcement, four of the IEBC’s seven commissioners held a press conference at a hotel in the capital to announce their disapproval of these findings.
“Due to the opacity of the process (…) we cannot take responsibility for the results that are announced,” said IEBC Vice-President Juliana Cherera, surrounded by three other commissioners.
She called on Kenyans to be “calm”.
The 2022 election was peaceful but marked by a sharp decline in turnout: around 65% of the 22.1 million voters went to the polls on Tuesday, down from 78% at the last poll in 2017.