Protecting the win, and securing the base: Kenya’s 2022 presidential election dispute and outcome

ABSTRACT

In much of Africa, opposition presidential candidates face the benefits of incumbency and often accuse the government of rigging. But in Kenya’s 2022 presidential election, it was the government-favoured candidate, Raila Odinga, who lost and accused the electoral body of rigging. Then-incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta had mobilised allies and senior government officials to support Odinga against his own deputy president, William Ruto, who won the election. Drawing on interviews, court proceedings and media coverage, we argue that Kenyatta and Odinga campaign compared poorly with Ruto’s robust mobilisation approach and use of class and religious narratives that resonated with voters. Also, the steadfast determination of the chairperson of the electoral body to withstand pressure of manipulation and to produce a transparent election by posting results on a publicly accessible portal created an atmosphere of openness that made it difficult to support rigging claims. This provided evidence to protect Ruto’s win. The claims of rigging served a purpose: they helped Odinga to secure his strongholds as a critical support base in subsequent power negotiations and likely as future voting blocs.

KEYWORDS:

• Kenya
• rigging
• fraud
• election technology
• William Ruto
• Raila Odinga

Kenya’s 2022 election was the seventh such political competition conducted since the return of multiparty democracy in 1991. All these elections have seen incumbents enjoy significant benefits of their position and have been characterised by claims of presidential election rigging or the use of ‘illegitimate and undemocratic means of tilting the playing field in favour of one party or candidate at the expense of others.’¹ The exception was the 2002 General Election, which the Kenya African National Union (KANU), the ruling party from independence in 1963, lost despite incumbent President Daniel arap Moi supporting the party’s candidate Uhuru Kenyatta.² All the presidential outcomes in the other General Elections have been disputed, with losers often filing petitions in the courts.³ The exception was in 2007, when the opposition led by Raila Odinga declined to pursue the court option arguing that the courts were so compromised that there was no chance of getting justice and instead called for public protests.⁴

Rigging claims are frequently characterised by the opposition parties accusing the government, incumbent president, and the electoral management body of rigging elections.⁵ Kenya’s 2022 presidential election was different because the claims of electoral fraud were made by the party and candidate who enjoyed the support of the then incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta. In the election, President Kenyatta supported Odinga against his own Deputy President, William Ruto, who presented himself as an “opposition candidate” because he had been marginalised from the mainstream of government after Kenyatta and Odinga ‘shook hands’ and committed to end political violence that followed the dispute over the 2017 presidential election results. The March 2018 ‘handshake’ gave rise to new political alliances and the eventual exclusion of Ruto from the centre of power. Despite this, Ruto won the election.

Odinga and his party, Azimio la Umoja (One Kenya Coalition Party), challenged Ruto’s victory at the Supreme Court. This was Odinga’s third consecutive petition at the Supreme Court  – after the ones filed in the aftermath of the 2013 and 2017 elections – to claim that there was electoral fraud robbing him victory.⁶ Odinga cited interference from foreigners, manipulation of the election results transmission system, and the last-minute split among officials of the electoral body, the Independent Election and Boundaries Commission (IEBC). The court upheld Ruto’s victory after finding that the claims of fraud did not have any basis.⁷ Odinga’s move to the Supreme Court came after his allies and senior government officials failed to manipulate the results at the national tallying centre.⁸ This attempt to manipulate presidential election results is consistent with a trend in African politics where incumbents tinker with electoral processes to favour themselves or – in the case of exiting leaders – their preferred successors.⁹ This was the case in Côte d’Ivoire in 2011 when Laurent Gbagbo lost to Alassane Ouattara but refused to either concede or hand over to the victor; in the Gambia in 2016 when Yahya Jammeh swore not to hand over power; and, more recently in Zambia, when Edgar Lungu attempted to rig himself back into office in the 2021 elections, only to lose resoundingly to veteran opposition candidate Hakainde Hichilema.¹⁰ In a sense, Kenya’s drama around presidential elections, where the incumbent lamented about ‘rigging’, was consistent with Africa’s recent political histories.

This paper discusses the context of Ruto’s win in a contest where there were significant benefits of incumbency, and the government and incumbent president supported Odinga. As demonstrated in the introductory paper, the contest rested on a set of contingent factors including changes in the form of political mobilisation and the strength of some institutions. Some of these factors were unique to the 2022 elections but how they worked does not suggest a complete break with Kenya’s ethnic-based politics.¹¹ As Cheeseman and Kamencu argue, Ruto’s win also depended on several factors rooted in ethnic politics.¹² Chome and Willis also suggest that communal obligation and a feeling of political indebtedness, alongside local economic grievances, consolidated Ruto’s support among the Kikuyu against Kenyatta’s preferred choice, Odinga.¹³ And Ajwang et al show how leading politicians used social media and affiliated accounts to distance themselves from ethnically divisive messaging.¹⁴

This paper contributes to this discussion on the dynamic nature of politics in Kenya, and contributes answers to the question posed in the introductory paper: has Kenya democratised? The paper focuses on the political mobilisation that led Ruto to win the 2022 presidential election and the institutional spaces that mediated the elections – the IEBC and the Supreme Court of Kenya – and ultimately protected Ruto’s victory. The paper adds to other analyses in this cluster by examining the unique developments surrounding the 2022 presidential election contest at a national level.

The paper discusses how the unique context of the 2022 elections influenced campaigns and mobilisation of voters. One, there was a sitting deputy president, Ruto, contesting as the “opposition” candidate and the official leader of opposition, Odinga, running as the government’s preferred candidate. Two, Kenyans were coming to terms with the fall-out between Kenyatta and Ruto, who had allied and rallied to defeat Odinga in both the 2013 and 2017 elections. But in 2022 it was President Kenyatta who allied with Odinga in an attempt block Ruto from the presidency. Three, Odinga’s candidacy had been propped on the widespread idea that he had the backing of what Kenyans call the “deep state”, a secretive group of powerful individuals who allegedly influence institutions to shape electoral outcomes.¹⁵

We argue that Ruto developed a robust campaign approach and messages that resonated with voters to overcome obstacles of benefits of incumbency that Kenyatta and Odinga placed on his way. Furthermore, beneath the veneer of ethnic mobilisation, Ruto instrumentalised the church and the economic worries of small-scale businesspeople, the “hustlers”, to redirect political campaigning from the convention of tribe to faith and class.¹⁶ This gave him a marked advantage. On the other hand, Odinga campaigned on the platform of the government and President Kenyatta and shared its failures on the hope that the “deep state” would influence the outcome. It turned out that no such thing existed. (Or if it existed, then it failed to influence institutions and to control the outcome in favour of Odinga.) When he failed, he blamed rigging.

Odinga’s claims of rigging focused on election technology, the same technology that ultimately protected Ruto’s win. The paper discusses how the IEBC bolstered electoral transparency through technology and strengthened the transmission and seamless public display of results in an unprecedented manner to fight off claims of fraud. In anticipation of allegations of fraud, the IEBC ensured that results announced at the polling station were seamlessly posted in a public portal, which was accessible to the public and anyone anywhere in the world. Political parties with agents in these polling stations could compare their hard copy results with what was posted on the portal ahead of any announcement by the IEBC. Anyone anywhere could add the results from individual polling stations and judge the race ahead of the IEBC’s announcement.

A particular interest of the paper is on the widespread claims of “hacking” the election through manipulation of electoral technologies because it was Odinga, a candidate favoured by the government, who alleged that some foreign agents had hacked the electoral body’s servers to rig in Ruto. We focus on this also because past experiences in falsification of results have shown that digital technologies used in elections are susceptible to human influence.¹⁷ Indeed, the use of electoral technology has become a legal and political battleground: election rigging has shifted from blatant ballot stuffing to hacking of technology.¹⁸ The latter has minimal digital footprints – except to expert eyes that are, in any case, few and far apart. Credibility of the results under such a context is dependent on a verifiable and transparent electoral process.

The claims of rigging nevertheless served a purpose for Odinga and allies. First, they helped to placate the feelings of defeat that overwhelmed his supporters who, after years of near misses, thought the 2022 presidency was a matter of formality because of support by the government. Claims of rigging therefore reduced the pain of missing again. Rejection of these claims by the Supreme Court did not dim their soothing value. Odinga’s supporters saw themselves as victims of a dysfunctional electoral and justice system. Second, the claims served to maintain Odinga´s strongholds as a critical support base in subsequent power negotiations with the winning government. In this sense, the claims were underpinned by what has emerged as a reality in Kenya´s politics: the voting blocs once placated remain loyal to their regional kingpins and are likely to vote in the same patterns subsequently. In Odinga´s case the claims would maintain loyalty of the blocs that have supported his past presidential election attempts.

The paper draws on the authors’ extensive interviews in different parts of the country and discussions with groups of experts in the period preceding the election and after. It also draws on interviews during and after the ruling on the election dispute at the Supreme Court and media accounts and review of the court’s proceedings on arbitration of claims of electoral fraud by Odinga’s team. The paper also engages with the evidence presented in the post-election tribunal that President Ruto established to determine the suitability of four IEBC commissioners to continue to hold office following allegations that they supported a request by powerful government and national security officials to manipulate the presidential election result to favour Odinga.¹⁹ The paper begins by identifying the key features of election rigging.

Election manipulation: is technology transparent or opaque?

In How to Rig an Election, Cheeseman and Klaas argue that nowadays elections are held almost everywhere and that few governments, including authoritarian governments, fail to hold elections. That is, many of these governments hold elections because they have learnt how to win; ‘the contest is rigged from the start.’²⁰ Many leaders have instrumentalised elections to entrench themselves in or even exclude competitors from power. In Africa, many governments have mastered the tricks of conducting elections without losing by tilting the playing field in favour of particular candidates at the expense of others.²¹ This view points at challenges that undermine free and fair elections in Africa.²² Indeed, Thandika Mkandawire notes that ‘African leaders exhibit a wide array of unethical ways when it comes to capturing power.’ To Mkandawire, leaders seem to think that the issue is not voters choosing leaders, but rather leaders choosing voters.²³

Cheeseman and Klaas have identified tactics that perpetrators use in election manipulation. These include vote buying, where governments and candidates bribe voters using different gifts in the hope that they will vote for them. There is also repression of opponents. More often this entails preventing opponents from campaigning or fencing off opponents from areas considered as strongholds of the ruling party. Third, unwanted candidates are denied access to media and are regularly harassed by state agents. Fourth, election-related technology is used to manipulate the results. This includes hacking the electoral electronic system to falsify the results. Finally, there is stuffing ballot boxes with fake votes and/or enabling favourable voters to vote multiple times. These manipulation strategies favour the government or the ruling party. Nonetheless, hacking systems may be done by the ruling party and their candidates, and they may also be victims because opponents can also be perpetrators.²⁴

Governments manipulate elections for many reasons as Simpsers notes, despite the threat of rigging undermining the potential of elections to deepen democratic governance.²⁵ Studies show that governments and ruling parties do not rig just to win.²⁶ Sometimes they rig even when victory is clearly secure.²⁷ Governments may manipulate elections to demonstrate that the winner has overwhelming support and therefore minimise petitions challenging their victory and also reduce demands and bargains by allied parties as well as losers. That is, rather than merely winning elections, manipulation of elections especially by padding numbers, may be done to convince the public that the winning party is powerful and resourceful, while lower numbers suggest otherwise.

Electoral actors have put in place systems that would promote transparency in the conduct of elections.²⁸ Creating an environment for transparency through electoral technology has gained significant attention almost everywhere alongside intensified political and technical struggles to produce trust in results.²⁹ However, electoral technology has become a subject of controversy as a source of transparency and, conversely, opacity.³⁰ Electoral bodies adopt technology often glossing over political interests and power struggles around election results. Winners may applaud electoral technology, but losers tend to question what lies behind the technology and more so the results servers as the black box.³¹

Noting that the art of building electoral transparency is both technical and political, Passanti and Pommerolle observe that the election technology market is sometimes not open to public participation and that the technical knowledge is spread among few experts who make it invisible to others. This leads to politicisation of electoral technology and the subsequent de-legitimatisation of results. Because of this, building transparency requires providing adequate information to the public.³² It requires creating a local community of technical experts who can support in building public trust in the technical system employed. However, these measures are insufficient to create public trust in elections if any of the competing parties is suspicious of the technology, especially if one of the parties is perceived as controlling the electoral body.³³ Be that as it may, political elites’ interest in electoral technology centres on assurance that the technology will not disadvantage them and their party. The struggle among them is not focused on preventing the use of technology but on the ability to exploit its use in a manner that would advantage them and win.

Improving electoral transparency in Kenya has been a repeated political battleground. Therefore, the technology adopted is not only meant to improve efficiency but also address fears by parties that view the electoral body as being under the control of the government. These battles started in 2007 when digital transmission of results was viewed with suspicion after the opposition tabled evidence of digitally transmitted results that differed from those verified in the constituencies.³⁴ This led to unpreceded violence and the electoral body was disbanded and an interim one established. The new body oversaw the conduct of a referendum on a new constitution in 2010 and the 2013 General Election. However, in 2013, the commission faced criticism when most of the electronic voter identification kits failed to function at the polling stations. Odinga, one of the leading candidates, protested that the failure of electronic system and reverting to the manual system was meant to manipulate the election to deny him victory. The dispute ended at the Supreme Court where the court ordered for a limited scrutiny of the results but upheld the final outcome for lack of adequate evidence to support claims of fraud.³⁵

Similar concerns about failure of electoral technology were raised in the 2017 election. The Kenya Integrated Elections Management System kits failed on election day. The opposition publicly alleged that the system had been hacked to manipulate the results in favour of the ruling party, the Jubilee Alliance Party. The matter ended at the Supreme Court and the court annulled the presidential election and ordered a fresh presidential poll. The court held that the electoral body lacked a firm control over electoral technology.³⁶

The IEBC factored these considerations in the preparations for the 2022 elections, but this did not prevent a dispute over the presidential results. Odinga and his allies in the government alleged that Ruto, assisted by a faction of the electoral commission that supported him, manipulated the results by hacking the system.³⁷ These claims were made when the IEBC had revamped its electoral infrastructure and re-examined all electoral technology issues raised by the Supreme Court. The commission only procured firms that could guarantee use of secure technology to ensure the electoral process was simple, transparent, and accountable to the voters.³⁸ The Commission adopted an integrated electoral technology system that would allow identification of voters and seamless transmission of results to the national tallying centre, and access in a public portal. The IEBC provided for public participation in the process and had regular consultations with domestic electoral actors, including political parties. A domestic community of technical experts and observers also regularly reviewed technical preparations at the IEBC and some of them were enlisted as friends of the court.³⁹

The voting itself remained manual. The ballot papers for the presidential election and the five other races were counted manually and results recorded at each polling station on forms prescribed by law.⁴⁰ These forms were then signed by the electoral officers, candidates’ agents (in the presidential race), and observers present at the polling station during vote counting. The results were announced by the election officer and publicly displayed for voters at the station. The election officers would immediately transmit the signed digital image of the relevant form to the national tallying centre. The officer would travel to the national tallying centre to hand in the hard copy of the results for verification of the digitally transmitted result. If anyone altered the digitally transmitted form, the changes would be immaterial if no change was also made on the several hard copies and the original form that is sealed together with the ballot papers in the box.

It is noteworthy that presidential candidates and parties with a robust parallel tallying system and agents across the polling stations can tabulate the results almost immediately after counting is concluded. Each polling station has no more than 700 registered voters. Given that the polling stations close at 6 pm, the counting, collating, and recording of presidential votes across the country is complete in each polling station within just a few hours of the polling station’s closure. The presidential candidates and parties would know the winner of the election a few hours after the closure of the polling station if they have agents to hand in results. Furthermore, political parties have the opportunity to verify the total ballots in each polling station by auditing the ballots cast, those rejected, and the spoilt for all the six seats to see the extent of variation, if any. With results on public portal anyone anywhere could access, collate, and tally the presidential election results just as the IEBC. One could audit claims of fraud by comparing digitally transmitted results on the public portal with soft copies in the hands of observers, party agents, and at the polling stations. Indeed, this became the main defence by the IEBC and the core argument by Ruto’s team against Odinga’s allegations of hacking the transmission system.

The 2022 presidential election: the spectre of ‘two incumbents’ tilting the playing field

The March 2018 “handshake” led to informal exclusion of Ruto from the centre of power. Odinga now became a powerful informal player within government. It was common to see government officials visiting Odinga for briefings and photo sessions, as it was to see Odinga and Kenyatta jointly inspecting government projects.⁴¹ These developments communicated to the voters, especially Odinga’s strongholds, that he was the government candidate in the 2022 presidential election. All he waited for was the formality of the election before he could ascend to the presidency.⁴² Significantly, through their “handshake”, the Kenyatta government inaugurated what they called the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), which proposed to constitutionally broaden executive powers.⁴³ However, some of Odinga´s opponents alleged that BBI was a smokescreen to provide for the inclusion of Odinga in Kenyatta’s power arrangement by any means.⁴⁴ Ruto opposed the amendments and other proposals in the BBI. His effective assault on BBI completely ended his political relationship with Kenyatta and Odinga. The fall-out allowed Kenyatta to drop Ruto’s allies from senior government positions while others were arrested and charged with corruption offences, sometimes trumped up, with most cases being abandoned when Ruto became President.⁴⁵

As Ruto’s woes increased, Odinga’s fortunes rose but the opposition generally weakened. Odinga and his allies supported government policies in parliament. This profiled Odinga as Kenyatta’s ally but implicated him in the failures of government. Within a short period, through President Kenyatta, Odinga secured political support from some powerful bureaucrats and Cabinet members, including the then Cabinet Secretary for Interior, Fred Matiang’i, who was in charge of deploying public administration officials and security agents. Others publicly supporting Odinga included Joseph Mucheru, who was Cabinet Secretary for ICT, whose docket was expected to enable secure transmission of election results from polling stations to tallying centres.⁴⁶ The Principal Secretary for Interior Karanja Kibicho publicly stated that information from the National Intelligence Service showed Odinga leading.⁴⁷

The government appeared committed to ensuring that Odinga had a perfect playing field to win the 2022 elections. This became more evident in 2021, less than a year to the election, when Kenyatta’s allies in the ruling Jubilee Party initiated a process to fill four vacant positions in the IEBC. The positions became vacant after the resignation of four commissioners after the dispute over the 2017 elections. President Kenyatta and Odinga, through allies, identified and nominated candidates to fill the posts.⁴⁸ This shaped the perceptions that the newly appointed commissioners would favour the government and its candidate. Months ahead of the election, Matiang’i reshuffled the County Commissioners, the national government administrative heads in the counties.⁴⁹ The ground for the 2022 election had begun to tilt.

Nonetheless, Odinga lost the election. This shocked his closest supporters, including President Kenyatta, who refused to congratulate Ruto and later referred to Odinga as ‘my president.’⁵⁰ This was the clearest indication that if the government and the incumbent president had powers to manipulate or falsify the results, then they failed to determine the outcome in favour of Odinga. In seeking to understand this outcome, the question to ask, therefore, is what did Odinga and his allies in government, including the President, get wrong? We argue that their reliance on ethno-regional alliances was overtaken by a discursive shift, initiated by Ruto, towards economic concerns, as well as the class and inequality dimensions of Kenyan society.

Building alliances from tribe to religion

In February 2022, Kenyatta publicly endorsed Odinga’s presidential candidature and also pleaded with his Kikuyu community to support him, stressing that: ‘When my young man [referring to Ruto] reforms, we will consider him.’⁵¹ Both Kenyatta and Odinga began to seek support for Odinga by building strong alliances, along ethnic lines, with leading ethnic elites. Key ethnic elites included former Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka of Wiper Democratic Party for the Akamba, and KANU’s Gideon Moi for the Kalenjin. Unlike in the previous 2017 election when Odinga claimed 71% of the Luhya ethnic bloc, this time, voters in the western part of the country where the community lives, were feeling jittery about his new political arrangements.⁵² The Luhya political elites became more sensitive to Odinga when he locked out Timothy Wanyonyi, a Luhya, from the Nairobi County gubernatorial contest. Odinga’s Azimio party supported Polycarp Igathe, a Kikuyu, at the expense of Wanyonyi, a sitting Member of Parliament in Nairobi, who had campaigned longer for the position. The Luhya voters in Nairobi saw this as Odinga’s ingratitude for their political support in the previous elections.⁵³

Ruto and his supporters exploited the jitters among the Luhya political elites, arguing that like Wanyonyi in Nairobi, Ruto had been a victim of Kenyatta’s deceit and that this would explain why Kenyatta refused to endorse Ruto for the presidency. This made it easy for Ruto to win over the most influential Luhya political elites, Musalia Mudavadi and Moses Wetang’ula, both of whom were former allies of Odinga. From then on, they collectively addressed various rallies in which they remodelled Ruto as a more reliable candidate who honoured his promises to his coalition partners, and whom he treated as equals.

The new Kenyatta-Odinga alliance isolated Ruto. In response, Ruto went directly to the grassroots using the churches, accompanied by local members of parliament, many of whom were elected in 2017 when Ruto presided over Jubilee Party primaries. In the churches, Ruto portrayed himself as a God-fearing leader who was being persecuted by a secular team that believed in earthly conspiracies. In doing so, Ruto would repeatedly say ‘they have godfathers and we have God the father.’⁵⁴ This was a powerful message distancing himself from the ethnic “godfathers”.

Ruto weaponised the church by drawing parallels between his persecutions with that of some biblical figures who eventually overcame their tribulations. With his supporters, Ruto took to social media to affirm his credentials as a leader driven by Christian values, citing carefully chosen biblical verses that they would share on their X (Twitter) handles to appeal to the influential constituency called Kenyans on Twitter (#KoT). For instance, following reports that Kenyatta and Odinga were plotting to form a coalition government – which would complete Ruto’s ejection from government – Ruto and his allies responded by quoting some apt biblical verses (Figure 1). Biblical verses were selected to send the message that Ruto would overcome the ‘political challenges that have turned him into an outsider in a government he helped form.’⁵⁵ This reflected the feelings among Ruto’s allies. They often lamented that they had been betrayed by Kenyatta, who relied on them to win three elections (one in 2013 and two in 2017, including the repeat presidential election) against Odinga, only to turn around and embrace Odinga, their nemesis, at Ruto’s and the Kalenjins’ expense.

Figure 1. Biblical verses quoted by Ruto and his allies. Tweet from @kipmurkomen, 27 April 2020: https://x.com/kipmurkomen/status/1254810201305292800; Tweets from @williamsruto, 26 April 2020: https://x.com/WilliamsRuto/status/1254333111766302723; https://x.com/WilliamsRuto/status/1254333107299385344.

The use of biblical messages was an allegorical way of Ruto communicating the feeling of betrayal by Kenyatta. Use of biblical messages reached congregations in many churches, thus endearing Ruto to local communities who also sympathised with him because of how he had been marginalised after the “handshake”. The biblical messages also reached communities without antagonising Kenyatta’s supporters in Mount Kenya region. This was an ingenious political strategy to counter Kenyatta and Odinga’s efforts of blocking Ruto. Weaponising the church was more effective than mobilising ethnic elites because it meant Ruto could visit any part of the country while employing biblical quotes and conduct fund-raisers for churches and other religious institutions. He also turned his official residence into a big church where interdenominational prayers would regularly take place with participants from all over Kenya. And when the government banned rallies as part of containment measures for Covid-19, the church became the main space for political struggle, which ironically served Ruto better – given his familiarity with church protocol and longer public support for church activities – compared to Odinga.⁵⁶

Ruto had always professed his Christian beliefs even before his fallout with Kenyatta. He enlisted these religious beliefs in his fight for the presidency. Even in his maiden speech soon after he was declared the winner, Ruto reiterated that he only won because of prayers from many people.⁵⁷ He repeated the same message while speaking to an international audience in South Korea, observing that the 2022 elections were an indirect referendum on believers versus unbelievers, which the believers won.⁵⁸ Effectively, Ruto had weaponised the church to surmount the hurdle of ethnic mobilisation on which he had been outdone by the Kenyatta-Odinga axis.

This is not to say that Ruto completely ignored ethnicity as a mobilising platform; he went beyond the “traditional” uses of ethnicity to reorient it in ways that made him emerge as a more appealing candidate. This involved infusing economic issues in the course of ethnic mobilisation, something Ruto did to devastating effect using his ‘hustlers’ versus ‘dynasties’ bifurcation of the political elites in Kenya.⁵⁹ By positioning himself as a hustler who was de-campaigned by a cabal of rich sons of richer politicians – Kenyatta and Odinga, whose fathers were the founding president and vice-president, respectively – Ruto whipped up nationwide emotions of class exclusion and income inequalities in many different ethnic groups.

Ruto’s campaign provoked Kenyans to re-examine their political relationship with the dominant political families, including the Kenyattas, the Odingas and the Mois. This class narrative forestalled the political impact of ethnic elite alliances that Odinga and Kenyatta had built around themselves. Ruto harped on the perception that his adversaries’ ethnic alliance was meant to prevent the poor from ever ascending to power. His ‘hustler-dynasty’ narrative gained traction. It was now the hustlers, led by Ruto, against the ‘dynasties’, comprising Kenyatta, son of a former President; Odinga, son of former Vice President; and Gideon Moi, son of another former President. Ruto’s hustler-dynasty narrative weakened the persuasiveness of ethnic considerations in the voting decisions of many Kenyans. For good measure, Ruto attacked the Kenyatta-Odinga axis for reintroducing tribalism in a country where people had moved on to issue-based politics.⁶⁰ This was after Kenyatta suggested in a public rally that Kenya’s presidency was not a preserve of two ethnic communities [i.e. Kikiyu (Kenyattas and Kibaki) and Kalenjin (Mois and Ruto)]: ‘only two tribes have occupied the top seat in Kenya and perhaps time is ripe for another community to take over.’⁶¹

Ruto rejected Kenyatta’s view.⁶² Ruto´s change of tongues explains in part the discursive shift from overt ethnic alliance building to the idea of owing political debts in the region, a subject that Chome and Willis explore in in this special collection. Ruto´s change of approach also speaks to the heightened contestation for the numerous Kikuyu votes in the heartland of Central Kenya. This is a rich theme that Cheeseman and Kamencu address in this collection. Our interest, however, is in how Ruto embarked on an approach of negotiating tribal arithmetic while casting the self-image of a detribalised national leader. The fact that he shifted the discourse from banal ethnicity to class and religion became hugely effective in enabling him to mobilise the same old way, while casting himself as a new and aggrieved player. This way, Ruto went back to Central in choosing a running mate who could bolster his candidacy financially and in terms of votes. The best bet for this position was Rigathi Gachagua, who had a past as a District Officer in the previously powerful provincial administrative structure under the presidency and was well versed in grassroots mobilisation. He had established networks with other low cadre civil servants who would come in handy. Gachagua also presented himself as a son of a peasant who had worked his way up into riches through hard work; he was a hustler.

The Ruto-Gachagua ticket combined ethnic considerations with a class dimension to show Kenyatta as a leader who had deliberately worked to “kill” small-scale Kikuyu businesses, which have always been the economic mainstay of the densely populated and land-short Mount Kenya region. It is noteworthy that during his second term as president, Kenyatta had made some unpopular economic policy decisions that were interpreted to be aimed at undermining the Kikuyu. These included a ban on scrap metal businesses, stopping public transport vehicles from operating the in city centre, and authorising raids in downtown River Road in Nairobi to fight contraband commodities that were depriving the government of tax revenue.⁶³ At the same time, there were numerous rumours to the effect that Kenyatta was merely doing this to eliminate competition against his vast family business empire.⁶⁴ The Ruto-Gachagua axis exploited these narratives to great effect. Using the hustler-dynasty narrative, they mobilised the small-scale traders to defy some of those directives and to reject Kenyatta’s preferred candidate, Odinga.⁶⁵

Ruto’s seeming metamorphosis from a Kalenjin ethnic nationalist to a national leader disinterested in ethnic mobilisation was not quite an ideological shift, but rather an opportunistic positioning for votes.⁶⁶ He must have adopted this approach to compensate for his anti-reform past. In the early 1990s, he joined a violent group, Youth for Kanu (YK92), to campaign for election of KANU and President Moi and violently fence off the opposition. Again, as noted by Cheeseman and Kamencu in this cluster, along with Kenyatta and two other suspects, Ruto was accused by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of crimes against humanity during the post-2007 election violence. The ICC cases collapsed after Ruto and Kenyatta won the 2013 election. His “hustler” narrative effectively superseded this past. The “hustler-versus-dynasty” and economic rhetoric appeared more current. Both approaches, however, tested the independence of institutions in Kenya – to which we now turn to.

Reversed roles in the fight over independence of institutions

In what emerged as a reversal of roles, Odinga and Ruto developed antagonistic positions on the independence of institutions. In previous election cycles, Odinga had positioned himself as the most consistent defender of the independence of institutions, while Ruto was the reactionary defender of establishments that barely tolerated such institutions, many of which they saw as unnecessarily anti-government. But Odinga’s alliance with the government and Kenyatta saw him propound the conservative and pro-government position, leaving Ruto as the most vocal defender of the independence of the Judiciary and the media, among others. Meanwhile, Kenyatta was critical of these institutions in ways that boomeranged on Odinga. For instance, following the nullification of the 2017 presidential elections due to errors by the IEBC, Odinga applauded the Supreme Court but Kenyatta and Ruto condemned the judges and threatened to exact revenge on the Judiciary. Kenyatta and Ruto declared that Kenya had a rogue Judiciary that needed to be tamed.⁶⁷ At the time, Odinga dismissed these sentiments as sterile threats of a bitter man.

After the “handshake” with Kenyatta, Odinga remained mute when the government cut the Judiciary budget and when the President refused to appoint judges to the Court of Appeal – despite various court orders requiring him to do so.⁶⁸ Ruto – using his closest allies as his mouthpieces – supported the Judiciary even as it vowed to remain independent.⁶⁹ In all these struggles, Odinga remained studiously silent. This way, Ruto buttressed his campaigns by promising to support and enable institutions to perform their tasks without political interference. Essentially, Ruto took a different position from Odinga and Kenyatta, and would publicly go against the government.⁷⁰

Ruto’s rhetoric in support of the independence of institutions achieved three fundamental goals. One, it cast Odinga as a believer in personality cults, one who worked by interfering with independent institutions such as the Judiciary and the IEBC whenever they threatened his quest for power. Two, Ruto associated Odinga with and implicated him in the failures of Kenyatta’s second term, including the high cost of living and the huge debt that Kenyans owed China. Three, Ruto portrayed both Odinga and Kenyatta as dishonest opportunists who entered into political agreements (including coalitions) that they had no intention to uphold.

A split electoral body and the duel in the presidential petition

Ruto won the election with a razor-thin margin: 50.8% against Odinga’s 48.2%. As in previous elections, Odinga petitioned the Supreme Court to nullify the election for what he considered a fraud that robbed him of victory. At the court, contests of narratives unfolded: electoral technology as a source of transparency by Ruto’s team versus technology as a tool for opacity by Odinga and allies. The Odinga legal team’s strategy targeted technology and technicalities arguing that Ruto did not garner the 50% plus 1 vote as required by law, and that the Chair of IEBC, Wafula Chebukati, had announced the results without tallying and verifying them. The team also argued that results transmission system had been manipulated to falsify results posted on the public portal.⁷¹ Odinga and his lawyers were making these claims when election observers had already noted that the electoral process and specifically use of technology was comparatively more transparent than the August 2017 election.⁷²

Against these issues was the shadow of a split within the electoral commission between the four commissioners recruited a few months prior to the August 2022 election, and the Chair and two other commissioners who had remained in office after the 2017 elections. The split deepened over the management and credibility of the results. While all the commissioners took turns to publicly announce presidential results as computed for constituencies, towards the end of the tallying process, the four new commissioners left the tallying centre for a city hotel to hold a press conference, where they alleged that the electoral body was announcing unverified results that could not be considered a reflection of the will of the people. The statement of the quartet, popularly referred to as the Cherera Four, surprised many coming as it did after they had participated in announcing most of the constituency results.⁷³ Furthermore, their statement contained errors in its summation of votes awarded to all presidential candidates, which raised concerns on the veracity of their claim.⁷⁴

Odinga’s petition also highlighted this split in the Commission with an emphasis that the four commissioners had unprecedently disowned the results, emphasising that the Cherera Four comprised a majority of the commissioners. In court, the four commissioners continued to claim that the results were not verified and that the Chair, Chebukati, was not transparent. Ruto cast the four as sleeper mercenaries who were taking instructions from outside the IEBC to subvert the will of the people.⁷⁵ In court, Ruto’s lawyers rejected claims of election manipulation by pointing out that the evidence was verifiable and was available on a public portal, at the polling stations, and in the ballot boxes. The IEBC Chair’s evidence in court, alongside that of the remaining two commissioners, also revolved around this argument and the transparent result verification at the national tallying centre. The court dismissed the claims of the Cherera Four, holding that they had all along participated in the verification of results at various levels, and that their sudden about-face at the tail end of the process was suspect. Eventually, three of the four resigned and one member faced a tribunal investigating claims of attempting to subvert the will of the people.⁷⁶ During the tribunal proceedings, it was revealed that a team from the National Security Advisory Council, which included the Vice Chief of Defence Forces, the head of police, the Solicitor General and other powerful officials from the presidency, visited the tallying centre and pressed the IEBC Chair to alter the results because ‘the country is going to burn’⁷⁷ if the IEBC declared Ruto as the president-elect.

Although the Cherera Four did not persuade the Supreme Court, their reservations about the way the electoral body conducted the elections chipped away at the perceived legitimacy of a Ruto presidency. The Cherera Four split public opinion and left a stain on the conduct of the electoral body, somehow strengthening Odinga’s arguments about fraud and a dysfunctional IEBC whose pronouncements were not beyond reproach.⁷⁸ Overall, the statement by the four played on popular anxieties regarding the credibility of presidential elections in Kenya.⁷⁹ Similar claims in 2013 and 2017 helped Raila to sustain the loyalty of his strongholds. This strengthened the public protests by the opposition and became politically important in negotiations for electoral reforms and power arrangements with Kenyatta.⁸⁰

Odinga also exploited the split within the electoral body to discredit the elections. He brought in the dimension of foreign interference with the IEBC servers noting that one Venezuelan by the name Jose Carmago, had his digital footprints everywhere, including in the images of the forms uploaded from the polling stations.⁸¹ However, in doing so, Odinga’s team did not compare the digital image forms to the original hard copies. The court ordered a supervised verification of the results in a sample of polling stations under the supervision of the Registrar of the Supreme Court. The Registrar’s report revealed that the results provided in form 34A and transmitted to the public portal did not differ from the actual ballot papers cast and retrieved physically from the ballot boxes.

Ruto’s lawyers termed claims of manipulation as fabrications, and provided evidence that the name of Jose Carmago cited by Odinga was an overlay of the original form and that there was nothing improper. Like the IEBC evidence and the report by the Registrar of the Supreme Court, Ruto’s lawyers argued that the records on the public portal reflected what was contained in the ballot boxes and on the copies that party agents across the country had signed. Ruto’s lawyers accused Odinga and his allies of actually trying to falsify the final result using the Cherera Four. The IEBC Chair also emphasised that senior government officials had pressed him to falsify results in favour of Odinga.⁸²

The electoral body told the court that the commission had studiously followed procedures to address the gaps cited in annulling the 2017 election. The commission also explained that the electoral processes had been revamped to comply with the judgement by the Court of Appeal that the polling station is the true locus for the free exercise of the voters’ will. The judgement underlined that counting of the votes at the polling station ‘is clothed with a finality not to be exposed to any risk of variation or subversion’.⁸³ This required publishing the results from the polling stations as relayed to the national tallying centre.⁸⁴

The court concluded that Odinga’s argument of foreign agents hacking into the IEBC’s servers and altering the results in favour of Ruto lacked basis. His lawyers could not show the difference between results at polling stations and the forms on the public portal. The court asked, ‘If the results that matter are those that are reflected in Forms 34A as filled in at the polling station, what good would altering figures in the servers do if the ultimate declaration of the winner is based on the figures in the physical forms?’ Clearly, the electoral procedures put in place meant that it was immaterial if anyone made changes in a copy of the results without altering many other copies in the hands of many agents and observers. Indeed, it also emerged that some of the forms and figures given by Odinga’s lawyers were obvious alterations, while others had been used in the 2017 election petitions.⁸⁵ Eventually, the Supreme Court held that Odinga’s lawyers had actually falsified some of the documents that they presented as “evidence”. The court upheld Ruto’s victory.

Odinga and his allies criticised the Supreme Court for ignoring the ‘overwhelming evidence’ his lawyers had presented to support claims of rigging.⁸⁶ They were also upset that the court described their evidence as ‘no more than hot air’ and the judges’ claim that ‘we were taken on a wild goose chase that yielded nothing of probative value.’⁸⁷ Odinga and his team continued to insist that the elections were rigged and his victory stolen.⁸⁸ He publicly noted that ‘we respect the opinion of the court, although we vehemently disagree with their decision.’⁸⁹

Conclusion

This paper has examined the key developments surrounding Kenya’s 2022 elections and identified forms of mobilisation, the strengthened electoral technology and process, the inner workings of the electoral body, and the Supreme Court as determining the outcome. The electoral procedures put in place to address past challenges weakened Odinga’s claims of electoral fraud and helped to protect Ruto’s victory. Ruto ran a more successful campaign, a narrative of class, and positioned himself as a detribalised, God-fearing son of a peasant whose experiences of childhood poverty resonated with that of many voters across the country, the hustlers. On the other hand, Odinga’s mobilisation relied on ethno-regional kingpins and the benefits of incumbency, Kenyatta and the government. When he failed, Odinga blamed it on rigging, a claim he made to soothe the pain of his supporters and secure their loyalty as blocs as maintained in past attempts at presidency.

We argue that Ruto’s approach and victory against the many odds do not suggest a complete break with the ethnic forms of mobilisation. Indeed, Chome and Willis show that the Kikuyu had a collective memory of communal political debt. Cheeseman and Kamencu also show that the 2022 political mobilisation was not a clear break with the past, while Ajwang et al show how social media helped politicians mobilise both swing and core support bases. They all demonstrate significant changes taking place in Kenya’s politics but do not suggest a complete erosion of ethnic basis of political mobilisation.

The strengthened electoral process and the Supreme Court’s role safeguarded the outcome. The national security officials failed to influence the IEBC to falsify the results because of a split in IEBC and the Chair’s firm position. When they failed, Odinga blamed his loss on manipulation of technology. However, the IEBC and the Supreme Court turned to technology and transparency of the process to verify and uphold the result. The seamless transmission of results, and subsequent opening up of election servers for scrutiny under the supervision of the court, played an important role in legitimising the result and protecting the Ruto win. The claims of fraud could not be credible to objective observers, including from Odinga’s own backyard. Electronic relaying of results from polling stations, backup of hard copies and originals in ballot boxes and posting results on an accessible portal where anyone could tally the figures, rendered results more transparent and protected Ruto’s victory. Ultimately, Kenyatta could not have his wish to hand over power to Odinga.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This article draws from research supported by Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office, research project on ‘Kenya Elections, 2022 Early Warning and Long-Term Monitoring’.

Notes

1 Cheeseman and Klaas, How to Rig an Election, 6.

2 Oyugi, Wanyande, and Odhiambo-Mbai, The Politics of Transition in Kenya.

3 Mueller, “The Political Economy of Kenya’s Crisis”; Cheeseman, “The Kenya Elections of 2007”; Kanyinga, Democracy and Political Participation; Kanyinga and Odote, “Judicialization of Politics”; Kanyinga and Okello, Tensions and Reversals in Democratic Transitions; Lynch, Cheeseman, and Willis, “From Peace Campaigns to Peaceocracy.”

4 Cheeseman, “The Kenya Elections of 2007”; Calas, “From Rigging to Violence”; Branch and Cheeseman, “Democratization, Sequencing.”

5 Axel and Peters, “Kenya’s 2007 General Election”.

6 Cheeseman et al., “Kenya’s 2017 Election.”

7 Joseph Wangui and Brian Wasuna, “Supreme Court: William Ruto is Kenya’s duly elected president,” Nation Africa, September 5, 2022. https://nation.africa/kenya/news/politics/supreme-court-william-ruto-is-kenya-s-duly-elected-president/; Rael Ombuor, “Defeated Kenyan Candidate Declares Election Results Null and Void,” The Washington Post, August 16, 2022. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/16/kenya-election-odinga-ruto/.

8 The Star, “Chaos as Raila’s Chief Agent Claims ‘Bomas is Scene of Crime’.” August 13, 2022. https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2022-08-13-chaos-as-railas-chief-agent-claims-bomas-is-scene-of-crime/.

9 Opalo, “African Elections”.

10 Beardsworth, Siachiwena, and Sishuwa, “Autocratisation, Electoral Politics and Limits of Incumbency”; Xan Rice, “Conflict Looms Over Ivory Coast.” The Guardian, December 6, 2010. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/06/ivory-coast-election-stalemate-gbagbo; Agencies, “Gambian President Yahya Jammeh Says He Will not Step Down,” December 21, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/21/gambia-president-yahya-jammeh-will-not-step-down; Chris Mfula, “Trailing After Early Count, Zambian President Questions if Vote Fair.” Reuters, August 14, 2018. https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/zambias-opposition-leader-hichilema-takes-early-presidential-election-lead-2021-08-14/.

11 Cheeseman et al., “Has Kenya Democratized?”, this issue.

12 Cheeseman and Kamencu, “The Battle for Central,” this issue.

13 Chome and Willis, “Debt, Credit, and Obligations,” this issue.

14 Ajwang, Abboud, and Lugano, “Social Media and Politics as Usual?”, this issue.

15 Ochieng’ Kanyadudi, “Why Ruto, Oburu are Wrong about ‘Deep State’s’ Role in 2022 Elections.” The Star, September 20, 2020. https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2020-09-20-why-ruto-oburu-are-wrong-about-deep-states-role-in-2022-elections/.

16 Lockwood, “Hustler Populism.”

17 Odote and Kanyinga, “Election Technology”.

18 Kanyinga and Odote, “Judicialization of Politics”; Lynch, Cheeseman, and Willis, “From Peace Campaigns to Peaceocracy.”

19 Republic of Kenya, The Tribunal Appointed.

20 Cheeseman and Klaas, How to Rig an Election.

21 Ibid.

22 Long, “Voting, Fraud, and Violence”; Daxecke, Di Salvatore, and Ruggeri, “Fraud is What People Make of It”.

23 Thandika Mkandawire, “Africa: Insight – In ‘African Democracy’ the Big Men Believe in Choosing Their Own Voters.” April 18, 2008. https://allafrica.com/stories/200804171247.html.

24 Cheeseman and Klaas, How to Rig an Election, 129.

25 Simpers, Why Governments and Parties Manipulate Elections; Hafner Burton, Hyde, and Jablonski, “When Do Governments Resort to Election Violence?”; Albertson and Guiler, “Conspiracy Theories”.

26 Elischer, “Do African Parties Contribute to Democracy?”; Barkan, “Electoral Violence in Kenya”.

27 Bratton, “Second Elections”; Luo and Rozenas, “Strategies of Election Rigging”; Idowu, “Democratic and Electoral Process in Nigeria.”

28 Calingaert, “Election Rigging and How to Fight It.”

29 Odote and Kanyinga, “Election Technology”; Passanti and Pommerolle, “The (un)making of Electoral Transparency.”

30 Passanti and Pommerolle, “The (un)making of Electoral Transparency.”

31 Cheeseman, “Digital Dilemmas.”

32 Passanti and Pommerolle, “The (un)making of Electoral Transparency.”

33 Odote and Kanyinga, “Election Technology.”

34 Republic of Kenya, Report of the Independent Review Commission.

35 Raila Odinga & 5 Others v IEBC & 3 Others; Wachira Maina, “Will 2013 Presidential Election Petition Ruling Form Precedence?” Daily Nation, August 26, 2017. https://nation.africa/kenya/news/politics/will-2013-presidential-election-petition-ruling-form-precedence--443272.

36 Raila Amolo Odinga & another v IEBC & 4 others & Attorney General & another.

37 Odinga & 16 Others v Ruto & 10 Others; Law Society of Kenya & 4 Others (Amicus Curiae) (Presidential Election Petition E005, E001, E002, E003, E004, E007 & E008 of 2022 (Consolidated)) [2022] KESC 54 (KLR) (Election Petitions).

38 An interviewee stressed that Smartmatics installed block-chain technology allowing for transmission and storage of results in a manner difficult to make changes, April 28, 2023.

39 Interview, the Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet), June 15, 2023.

40 Form 34A for presidential election.

41 Fredrick Obura, “Cabinet Secretary Margaret Kobia Briefs Raila on Youth Day Preparations.” The Standard, 2020. https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/work-life/article/2001337205; Samuel Owino, “Unity Deal: Raila to Get Briefing from Cabinet Secretary.” Daily Nation, April 4, 2018. https://nairobinews.nation.africa/unity-deal-raila-to-get-briefing-from-cabinet-secretary/; Imende Benjamin, “Uhuru, Raila make Impromptu Visit to CBD at Night, Inspect Projects.” The Star, June 2, 2020, https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2020-06-02-uhuru-raila-make-impromptu-visit-to-cbd-at-night-inspect-projects/.

42 Kanyadudi, “Why Ruto, Oburu are Wrong,” Op. Cit.

43 Gautama Bhatia, “BBI Appeal: The Doctrine of Basic Structure Revisited,” The Elephant, August 27, 2021. https://www.theelephant.info/op-eds/2021/08/27/bbi-appeal-the-doctrine-of-basic-structure-revisited/.

44 Onguny, “The Politics Behind Kenya’s Building Bridges Initiative”; Onyango K’Onyango, “Ruto Allies frown as Uhuru, Raila Renew their Bromance.” Daily Nation, April 3, 2021. https://nation.africa/kenya/news/politics/ruto-allies-frown-as-uhuru-raila-renew-their-bromance-3347054.

45 People Team, “Questions for DPP as Graft, Tax Cases Dropped.” People Daily, October 13, 2022. https://peopledaily.digital/news/questions-for-dpp-as-graft-tax-cases-dropped-153604/.

46 Mwangi Muiruri, “CS Mucheru: Raila Will Take it in Round One.” Daily Nation, May 30, 2022. https://nation.africa/kenya/news/politics/cs-mucheru-raila-will-take-it-in-round-one-3831704.

47 Justus Ochieng’, “PS Kibicho: Intelligence Report Shows Raila will Win by 60 Percent of Votes.” Daily Nation, June 1, 2022. https://nation.africa/kenya/news/politics/ps-kibicho-intelligence-report-shows-raila-will-win-by-60-percent-of-votes--3834096.

48 Interview, Nairobi, 4 September 2021; Interview, Jubilee party politician, Nairobi, 19 November 2022.

49 The Star, “132 County Commissioners Reshuffled in New Changes.” February 16, 2022. https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2022-02-16-132-deputy-county-commissioners-reshuffled-in-new-changes/.

50 Mate Tongola, “Uhuru Kenyatta: My leader is Baba.” The Standard, September 7, 2022. https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/evewoman/national/article/2001455104/uhuru-kenyatta-my-president-is-baba.

51 Ibid.

52 The Elephant, “The Campaign that Remembered Nothing and Forgot Nothing.” The Elephant, December 2, 2022. https://www.theelephant.info/features/2022/12/02/the-campaign-that-remembered-nothing-and-forgot-nothing/.

53 Ibid.

54 Kenyans.co.ke, “I Don’t Have a Godfather, God is My father. -DP Ruto.” Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1015352372149617.

55 Roselyne Obala, “Ruto Turns to Bible in his Fight for Survival.” The Standard, 2020. https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/the-standard-insider/article/2001369518/ruto-turns-to-bible-in-his-fight-for-survival.

56 Jeff Otieno, “Kenya: Politicians Using Churches as Political Battleground to Bypass Rally Ban.” The Africa Report, September 16, 2021. https://www.theafricareport.com/126685/kenya-politicians-using-churches-as-political-battleground-to-bypass-rally-ban/.

57 Njoki Kihiu, “I was Prayed into Victory: President-elect William Ruto.” Captial FM, August 15, 2022. https://www.capitalfm.co.ke/news/2022/08/i-was-prayed-into-victory-president-elect-william-ruto/.

58 Kai Eli, “William Ruto Says Believing in God Made Him Win Election: It Was Referendum of Faith.” Tuko News, November 25, 2022. https://www.tuko.co.ke/politics/484522-william-ruto-believing-god-win-election-referendum-faith/.

59 Karanja, “Hustlers versus Dynasties.”

60 Gideon Keter and Selina Teyie, “Ruto Accuses Uhuru of Championing Tribalism.” The Star, August 16, 2021. https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2021-08-16-ruto-accuses-uhuru-of-championing-tribalism/.

61 Vincent Kijetan, “The Presidency does not Belong to Two Tribes — Uhuru.” The Standard, 2021. https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/kenya/article/2001399596/the-presidency-does-not-belong-to-two-tribes-uhuru.

62 The Star, “Ruto: I Supported Uhuru Not Because He is Kikuyu.” January 10, 2021. https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2021-01-10/.

63 Bonface Otieno, “Uhuru Bans Scrap Metal.” Business Daily, January 20, 2022. https://www.businessdailyafrica.com/bd/economy/uhuru-bans-scrap-metal-business-over-increased-vandalism-3688472; Collins Omulo, “NMS to Start Enforcing Matatu CBD Ban.” Daily Nation, March 28, 2022. https://nation.africa/kenya/counties/nairobi/nms-to-start-enforcing-matatu-cbd-ban-by-the-end-of-april-3762634; Dorcas Wangira, “Fighting Fakes: Mobile Phones The Most Counterfeited Goods in Kenya.” Citizen Digital, May 14, 2020. https://citizen.digital/news/fighting-fakes-mobile-phones-the-most-counterfeited-goods-in-kenya-332564.

64 David Ndii, “Crony Capitalism and State Capture: The Kenyatta Family Story.” The Elephant, July 7, 2018. https://www.theelephant.info/op-eds/2018/07/07/crony-capitalism-and-state-capture-the-kenyatta-family-story/.

65 Macharia Gaitho, “Nyamakima Kingmakers: How Traders Stopped Uhuru Kenyatta's Plan.” Daily Nation, September 12, 2022. https://nation.africa/kenya/news/nyamakima-kingmakers-how-traders-stopped-uhuru-plan-3944954.

66 Shilaho, Political Power.

67 Titus Waweru, “President Uhuru Kenyatta Threatens to ‘deal with’ Judiciary if Re-elected.” The Standard, September 2017. https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/politics/article/2001253379/president-uhuru-kenyatta-threatens-to-deal-with-judiciary-if-re-elected; Patrick Lang’at, “Kenya President, Deputy Hit Out at Supreme Court.” The East African, August 2, 2017. https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/news/east-africa/kenya-president-deputy-hit-out-at-supreme-court-1372702; Al Jazeera, “Uhuru Kenyatta to Court: ‘We Shall Revisit This’.” September 2, 2017. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/9/2/uhuru-kenyatta-to-court-we-shall-revisit-this; Susan Muhindi, “High Court gives Uhuru 14 Days to Appoint Six Judges.” The Star, October 21, 2021. https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2021-10-21-high-court-gives-uhuru-14-days-to-appoint-six-judges/.

68 Paul Ogemba and Kamau Muthoni, “Budget Cuts: Treasury Slashed Judiciary’s Budget by Sh3 Billion.” The Standard, 2020. https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/nairobi/article/2001347258/judiciary-on-trial-as-cash-crisis-hits-hard; Paul Ogemba, “Heartbreak for Six Judges as Uhuru Rejects their Appointment.” The Standard, 2021. https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/national/article/2001414750/heartbreak-for-six-judges-as-uhuru-rejects-their-appointment.

69 David Maraga, “Statement by Chief Justice David Maraga on Judiciary Budget Cuts – The Judiciary of Kenya.” November 4, 2019. https://judiciary.go.ke/statement-by-chief-justice-david-maraga-on-judiciary-budget-cuts/.

70 Patrick Vidija, “DP Ruto: Finally, BBI Verdict Brings an End to Political Conmanship.” The Standard, April 2022. https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/national/article/2001441901/dp-ruto-finally-bbi-verdict-brings-an-end-to-political-conmanship.

71 Fredrick Ajwang and Geoffrey Lugano, “Why Azimio’s Presidential Petition Stood No Chance.” The Elephant, November 26, 2022. https://www.theelephant.info/features/2022/11/26/why-azimios-presidential-petition-stood-no-chance/.

72 The Carter Centre, “Preliminary Report.” September 8, 2022. https://www.cartercenter.org/resources/pdfs/news/peace_publications/election_reports/kenya/2022/kenya-preliminary-report-2022.pdf; IRI/NDI International Election Observation Mission to Kenya, Final Report of the 2022 General Election. https://www.ndi.org/sites/default/files/NDI%20IRI_International%20Election%20Observation%20Mission%20to%20Kenya_0.pdf.

73 Juliana Cherera (Vice Chair), Justus Nyang’aya, Francis Wanderi and Irene Masit.

74 Emmanuel Wajala, “Why the 4 Commissioners are Wrong on Vote Rally.” The Star, August 16, 2022. https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2022-08-16-why-4-iebc-commissioners-are-wrong-on-vote-tally/.

75 Irene Mwangi, “The Cherera-led Four IEBC Commissioners were Hired to Determine Outcome of 2022 Polls – President Ruto.” Capital FM, January 17, 2023. https://www.capitalfm.co.ke/news/2023/01/the-cherera-led-four-commissioners-were-hired-to-determine-outcome-of-2022-polls-president-ruto/.

76 Kevin Cheruiyot, “Sack Masit, Muchelule IEBC Tribunal Tells Ruto.” Daily Nation, February 27, 2023. https://nation.africa/kenya/news/politics/fire-all-cherera-four-muchelule-iebc-tribunal-tells-ruto-4139498.

77 Republic of Kenya. Report and Recommendations of the Tribunal.

78 Clinton Ambujo, “Four Commissioners Distance Themselves from the Final Stage of Presidential Poll Tallying.” The Standard, August 15, 2022. https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/counties/article/2001453314/four-iebc-commissioners-distance-themselves-from-final-stage-of-presidential-poll-tallying.

79 Caroline Kimeu, “William Ruto Declared Winner of Kenya Presidential Election Amid Dispute.” The Guardian, August 15, 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/15/william-ruto-declared-winner-of-kenya-presidential-election-amid-dispute.

80 Kanyinga and Odote, “Judicialization of Politics”; Cheeseman et al., “Kenya’s 2017 Election”.

81 Carmago was an employee of Smartmatics firm hired by IEBC to secure electoral technology infrastructure.

82 Odinga & 16 Others v Ruto & 10 Others, Op Cit.

83 IEBC v Maina Kiai & 5 Others [2017] eKLR

84 Ochieng, “Protecting the Integrity”.

85 Raila Amolo Odinga & Another v IEBC & 4 Others & Attorney General & Another.

86 Salim Lone, “How Supreme Court Dealt Blow to Future Petitions, Democracy.” Daily Nation, September 12, 2022. https://nation.africa/kenya/blogs-opinion/blogs/how-supreme-court-dealt-blow-to-future-petitions-democracy-3946168; Kassim Adinasi, “Orengo: Supreme Court Ruling on Election Petition was Shameful.” Daily Nation, September 12, 2022. https://nation.africa/kenya/counties/siaya/orengo-supreme-court-ruling-on-election-petition-was-shameful-3945482.

87 Odinga & 16 Others v Ruto & 10 Others, Op Cit.

88 Purity Wangui, “Ruto's Regime Came to Power through Rigging – Raila.” The Star, November 27, 2022. https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2022-11-27-rutos-regime-came-to-power-through-rigging-raila/.

89 Felix Maringa, “Kenyans React as Supreme Court Upholds Ruto’s Victory.” Deutsche Welle, September 6, 2022. https://www.dw.com/en/kenyans-reaction-supreme-court-ruto/a-63031987.