Arthur Greene
William Ruto has been declared the winner of Kenya’s presidential election following a drawn-out and closely fought contest against Raila Odinga.
Although the Kenyan public went to the polls last Tuesday, the nation had to wait on tenterhooks for six days to hear the result of an election that has been too close to call.
Tensions peaked on Monday afternoon just before the declaration, when four election officials announced that they would refuse to accept the results.
The electoral commission’s vice chair and three other commissioners said that they can’t take ownership of the result because of the “opaque nature” of the final phase of the election.
Moments later Kenya’s top election official announced from the results centre in Nairobi that Ruto, 55, had emerged the winner with 50.49% of the vote.
Ruto, a former chicken seller from Kamagut in the rural Rift Valley province, spoke after the announcement.
“There are no losers. The people of Kenya have won because we raised the political bar,” he said.
“There is no looking back, we are looking to the future. We need all hands on deck to move forward.”
Ruto succeeds outgoing president Uhuru Kenyatta, who publicly endorsed the leader of his own opposition in Odinga after falling out with Ruto, then the country’s deputy president.
In the leadup to the election, Odinga was seen as the favourite to win given his government support and favourable opinion polls.
However, presenting an image as the “hustler-in-chief” who fought his way to the top of Kenyan politics, Ruto won a huge following.
He ran his campaign on improving Kenya’s economy. He has promised to fix the country’s skyrocketing food and fuel prices, its growing debt and mass youth unemployment.
Image source: @WilliamsRuto
