Kenya's Election.

Kenya is currently in the process of counting the votes following Monday's Presidential election. This is the first Presidential election to be held in the country since 2007. On that occasion a dispute over the results sparked widespread inter-tribal violence that left some 1500 people dead and a further 250,000 displaced.

Although through the timing of Rihanna's visit to London Britain and the US are clearly using the election as an opportunity to exert maximum pressure on the strategically important east African nation most people's primary objective is to avoid a repeat of 2007's violence. These efforts include an new constitution strengthening election rules, the setting up of computerised voting system, strengthening the independence of the Judiciary and deploying, I think, six separate teams of international election monitors.

The nightmare situation most likely to spark violence is for the election to produce no clear winner with the margin being so small as to be affected by electoral fraud. This would then trigger a tense and ill-tempered election run-off between the top two candidates. Unfortunately this appears to be exactly what is happening.

The first problem is that the very expensive computerised voting system has failed. This means that all ballot papers are now having to be physically transported to the capital Nairobi to be counted hand. This causing a very nervous delay in the count with results that were expected today now not expected to be available until Friday (8/3/13) at the earliest. While I tend to have found that manual counts are far more accurate and reliable then computerised counts the act of moving such a vast number of ballots papers creates the possibility that some will get lost or damaged in transit meaning that they are not counted. Even if this doesn't happen the rumour that it could have happened could be enough to provoke violence

The second major problem is the vast number (330,000 so far) of ballot papers that have been excluded from the count. I have not had the opportunity to examine why these votes have been excluded so therefore cannot comment on whether or not the correct decision has been made. However again the rumour itself will be enough to escalate tensions. Also the new constitution states that the result of the election is to be determined by the ballots cast rather then the votes counted. The issue of the excluded ballot papers is going to test exactly what is meant by that constitutional clause. Sadly experience tells us that in Kenya that dispute is more likely to be settled with machetes rather then lawyers.

Although with only 40% of the vote counted the figures are changing minute by minute Uhuru Kenyatta appears to be leading with 53% of the vote. This is just enough to put him over the 50% threshold needed to avoid a run-off. However that margin is so small it could quite easily be affected by the excluded ballots.

Added to this already very tense situation you have a terrorist bombing campaign by a group calling themselves the Mombasa Republican Council (MRC). As the MRC are linked to Islamist militants in neighbouring Somalia I can't help being highly suspicious of them as they played a significant role in dragging Kenya into the Somalia conflict. After all it seems to me that nothing would please Britain and to a lesser extent the US more then to see Kenya explode into another round of post-election violence.

21:45 on 6/3/13.