Do you want objectively understand where the Presidential contest btw DP Ruto and Hon Raila stand today? Your starting point must be the 2017 result…Uhuru’s victory margin over Hon Raila was 1.4 million votes…then work for yourself who between the 2 candidates lost his base…
Kenyans are on tenterhooks waiting for election results. Others have decided to be the IEBC. We are going to talk about that but that quote above from one of Ruto’s twitterers, Mr. Nassir Abdullahi summarizes, the whole dilemma the Ruto team has to deal with today. Let’s start with the math from Abdullahi’s perspective. Yes, Uhuru won the election by 1.4 million votes.
In the Mt. Kenya region, Uhuru (not Ruto) got over 4 million votes and Raila had 91,000 votes less than 2% of the vote from the region, and that was with 90% voter turnout in the region.
From what Kenyans have seen today the voter turnout is quite low and in the Mt. Kenya region getting between 60% and 65% of the registered votes in the region to turn up and vote is a challenge for the politicians.
Even if all the 65% who came to vote in the Mt. Kenya region this time around vote for Ruto that will be about 3.5 million which means Ruto loses 20% of those who voted for Uhuru even before anybody starts counting the votes. That alone leaves Ruto short by 500,000 votes from what Uhuru got and that is before they worry about the votes from the region that goes to Raila and his Azimio team.
If 20% of the voters in the region cast their votes for Raila and Martha as we see from the results that gives them 1 million votes. If you do the math then from Mt. Kenya region by those numbers Ruto has a net vote of 2.5 million votes which is the 3.5 million votes he gets minus the votes Raila gets in the region where he got nothing in 2017.
The bottom line here is that under those circumstances which is the reality today William Ruto will have a deficit of 1.5 million votes to catch Uhuru’s numbers in Mt. Kenya region in 2017. Where does he get those votes? That is really the big question for him right now.
Then we go to Nairobi which may also have 60% voter turnout this time around. Uhuru got 900,000 votes in Nairobi in 2017. Ruto will be lucky to get 500,00 votes in Nairobi. Raila with his Azimio team has the chance to pick something like 1.2 million votes in Nairobi or more. That means here Ruto will have a deficit of 700,00 votes and in 2017 they had a net surplus of 200,000 over Raila. You do the math and Ruto needs another 1 million votes to catch up where Uhuru was in 2017.
Now just between the Mt. Kenya region and Nairobi, Ruto could very well find himself in a vote deficit of 2.5 million votes to catch up where Uhuru was in 2017.
That extra 2.5 million votes does not exist anywhere in Kenya for Ruto. Other than in the Kalenjin zones where Ruto could collect all the votes as they did in 2017, there is nowhere else where Ruto will have a net vote above Raila, and if so they will be minor numbers that never add up even to 1 million left alone 2.5 million votes.
Yes, William Ruto has done better in the Western voting block but they only had a jump in Bungoma. That will be a couple hundred thousand votes at most. Ruto has also done well on the Coast but the idea that he would get the majority vote in the Coast and in Western was just fantasy. It did not happen and the numbers speak for themselves now.
In Ukambani nothing has changed and the same in Turkana the two places the Ruto groups thought they would get votes and upset the Raila Azimio train.
Surprisingly Raila and his Azimio team have done pretty well in the Rift Valley region and got more votes there than he did in 2017. So some of these things will cancel out stuff from both sides.
My sense is that the Raila Azimio gain in Nairobi alone cancels out any drawbacks they have suffered in their strongholds. That leaves Azimio with the Mt. Kenya vote they got which they never hard in 2017.
Conservative estimates right now are that Raila wins the presidential election by about 700,000 votes with a 52 v 47 percentage point over William Ruto. Those are estimates and they don’t matter until we get the results from the IEBC.
There is a big concern out there that Raila may win the presidency with Martha Karua as his deputy but they will have a hang parliament where they have no control.
I wouldn’t worry about that for a second. We know our MPs. For the UDA MPs as soon as their Ruto is headed to Sugoi they will be ready to work with whoever is in the State House to sort out things for their constituents.
The biggest bomb for the new M.Ps is that they have lost control of the CDF which is one big reason these people run to be M.Ps because they have Shs. 137 million per constituency every year and it is money they use as they wish.
Not anymore after the Supreme Court ruling last week barring M.Ps from managing or rather mismanaging the CDF money intended to benefit their constituents. That ruling cannot be appealed and all the tricks the M.Ps try to grab that money again will be subject to that ruling.
The first thing the re-elected M.Ps are going to do without paying any attention to the Supreme Court ruling on the CDF is to rush back to the CDF offices and work with the NG-CDF committees to clean up all the mess they have in there before the national government takes over CDF and unravels everything. That has to be stopped before they grab everything.
This is an area where Kenyans will have to be very vigilant and we should all say a word of thanks to the civil society groups that took this issue to court and fought it all the way to the Supreme Court.
We have to be careful because whoever becomes the president is going to try to make deals with the MPs so that the MPs can keep their dirty hands in the CDF and help their new big guy. That is not good for the country and we are going to put it right on the table as soon as the next government is formed.
It is going to be up to the newly elected national government, and hopefully, it is Azimio, to work out a system where that Shs 42 billion a year for CDF is used efficiently and effectively for the benefit of all Kenyans and not as pocket money for MPs as has been the case for 19 years.
That is going to be a very good starting point for the next government and Kenyans will know right off the bat if the new government wants to feed the MPs more money or work with Kenyans and the MPs to develop the country.
The elections have helped Kenyans with a few things regarding the CDF. Most election centers were in schools and Kenyans got to see live the terrible conditions most of our schools are in. Broken chairs and desks, non-existent doors, dirty and dusty floors, and those horrible blackboards that teachers use to write teaching material for students which look so terrible it is hard to figure out how teachers use them.
Our CDF is supposed to help build and renovate those schools. That is not happening as Kenyans could see in just that one day. How about the kids who live and study there for years?
There have also been all the talk about bottoms-up and all that stuff. There can be better bottom-up starting point than using our CDF to benefit all Kenyans and grow it from there. We are coming for that.
As for the election, it is a good thing Kenyans have access to the electoral from the IEBC portal so they can oversee the electoral results that the IEBC will declare which should be as soon as possible.
There are a few people screaming at President Uhuru Kenyatta to call Ruto and congratulate him as the next president. Maybe there are others asking him to do the same for Raila but at least they are not as noisy as the others.
Someone needs to tell these people that only the chair of the IEBC can publicly declare the presidential election results. President Uhuru cannot and will not hijack that job.
In fact, if he did such a thing the same people asking to anoint their little gods would be the ones yelling at him for breaking the law. Now they are telling the president that Dennis Itumbi has already done vote tallying for them and it is time to announce his numbers. This is not 2017 fellas.
I have my numbers and everybody else has their numbers. Let’s just wait for the official announcement. People in the know who work with IEBC and the party honchos at the Tallying Centre already know the results of the August 9, elections. Poor you and I have to wait. Fine as long as the IEBC doesn’t screw it up again as they did in 2017. It is time to put the country first.
Our election system now puts the IEBC in a very tight spot. They have said they will announce the presidential election results on Saturday. The numbers from the media houses are going to be done in the next couple of hours.
By end of Thursday, every Kenyan will know the results of the presidential elections with numbers from the IEBC system. You can’t dance around that. It is coming if it is not here already.
Adongo Ogony is a Human Rights Activist and a Writer who lives in Toronto, Canada
