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Ruto Declared Winner of Kenya Presidential Election: Live Results Updates - The New York Times

Ruto Declared Winner of Kenya Presidential Election: Live Results Updates - The New York Times

Ruto Declared Winner of Kenya Presidential Election: Live Results Updates - The New York Times
Aug 15, 2022 4 mins, 56 secs

Four of the country’s seven election commissioners would not verify the result, raising the specter of another legal challenge in a nation with a history of disputed votes.

Why this election matters: Kenya’s stability is vital.

NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenya’s vice president, William Ruto, won the country’s presidential election, the head of the electoral commission said Monday, days after a cliffhanger vote in a country that is pivotal to the economy and security of East Africa.

Ruto gained 50.5 percent of the vote, narrowly defeating Raila Odinga, a former prime minister, said the chairman of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, Wafula W.

But minutes before the result was announced, four of the seven commission members said they could not verify the outcome.

Ruto dismissed the declaration by the four electoral commissioners as a “side show.” Under the law, he said, the election results could be declared only by Mr.

Ruto, 55, a wealthy businessman, has cast himself as the champion of Kenya’s “hustler nation” — the disillusioned, mostly young strivers struggling to gain a foothold.

A question now hangs over the outcome because of the statement the vice chairwoman of the electoral commission, Ms.

Odinga, who ran for president four other times, had been exceptionally critical of the vote-counting process even before the declaration of results.

“This was the most mismanaged election in Kenya’s history,” Saitabao Ole Kanchory, Mr.

Odinga’s home region in western Kenya, as well as for his fellow Luos, the country’s fourth-largest ethnic group.

A hotly fought yet mostly peaceful election campaign, with candidates vying to replace a president who is voluntarily stepping down — that is an increasingly rare story in much of Africa, and one reason Kenya matters more than ever.

Kenyan civilians have paid a price, though, for their country’s prominence.

SAMBUT, Kenya — William Ruto spent his childhood on a plot of family land down an unpaved, narrow road in a quiet village in the Rift Valley, where he tended cows and helped till the field for maize and cabbage.

Ruto, vice president of Kenya for close to a decade, wakes up in a giant mansion in a leafy suburb in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, where he holds meetings before flying, as he did on a recent morning, on a helicopter parked close to a covered pool.

On Monday, the head of the electoral commission declared Mr.

Ruto, 55, Kenya’s next president, but a majority of the commissioners refused to sign off on the count, citing a lack of transparency.

But the case against him collapsed in 2016, as the government he served as vice president hampered evidence collection and engaged in what the court said was “witness interference and political meddling.”.

Ruto showed his ambition, classmates, neighbors and friends said in interviews.

Ruto pleaded with his parents to give him a small patch of their land to plant maize, his friends said.

Ruto has made some contributions to a school here or a church fund-raiser there, villagers said, the roads in the area are largely unpaved and many residents live in mud houses with no proper toilets.

Once again, Raila Odinga is at the heart of a presidential election that threatens to plunge Kenya into uncertainty.

His opponent, William Ruto, was declared the winner by the head of the country’s election commission on Monday, but four of the panel’s seven members said they could not sign off on the decision.

Ruto but as Monday’s announcement showed, Kenyan elections can be messy, unpredictable affairs.

Now, with the election commission split on the result, Mr.

The son of Kenya’s first vice president and an avowed leftist, Mr.

After his release, he led protests that culminated in Kenya’s first multiparty election in 1992 — although the first truly free vote would take another decade.

He tried again in 2013 and 2017, both times losing to Uhuru Kenyatta, Kenya’s departing president.

“Maize flour, cooking oil, cooking gas — everything is going up,” said Abzed Osman, an actor who relies on a small tourism business (“My side hustle,” he called it) to pay the bills.

“Corruption,” said Charles Owuiti, 40, standing at the back of a snaking line of voters outside a Nairobi school last week.

Owuiti said.

ELDORET, Kenya — In the hours on Monday after Kenya’s electoral commission declared William Ruto the nation’s fifth president, throngs of people crowded the streets in the town of Eldoret in the Rift Valley, ululating, clapping, hugging.

The head of Kenya’s electoral commission, Wafula W.

9 presidential election even though four of the country’s seven electoral commission members said they could not verify the results.

“We won; we did it again,” Brain Kipchirchir said while brandishing a poster with Mr.

The scenes were radically different in Kisumu, where the police tear-gassed protesters who accused the chairman of the electoral commission of rigging the vote.

Odinga’s Luo ethnic group, who were expecting him to be Kenya’s first leader from outside the ethnic Kikuyu and Kalenjin groups that have dominated the country’s halls of power since independence six decades ago.

Ruto, 55, the country’s vice president, was declared the winner on his first attempt.

Ruto is an ethnic Kalenjin.

Odinga’s spokesman said he would do so on Tuesday.

“This news has surprised us,” Tom Ogada, a youth leader in Kisumu, said of Mr.

A murder set the stage for Kenya’s last election.

Kenyatta, who later became president, and William Ruto, who won the presidency in the current race, according to the head of the country’s election commission

Both candidates — William Ruto and Raila Odinga — promised to tackle the challenges facing young voters, like the loss of jobs because of the pandemic and rising fuel and food prices

But young people have repeatedly shown their lack of interest, with the electoral commission struggling to register new voters

The electoral commission estimated that voter turnout was 65 percent —well off the 80 percent of the 2017 election

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