As voting gets underway in Kenya’s presidential rerun, President Uhuru Kenyatta has cast his ballot in Gatundu with a call to the citizens to turnout for the election, mired in multiple controversies.
An elated-looking Kenyatta raised his ballot paper for the cameras before slotting it into the box.
TVC News gathered that it has been a slow start to the Kenyan presidential election in parts of opposition stronghold, Kisumu, as ballot boxes arrived late, with some polling stations were empty and most had no polling staff.
Meanwhile, youths milled around on the street, and burnt tyres. In Kisumu and other opposition strongholds, supporters of leader Raila Odinga have largely heeded his call to boycott the election.
The fresh election follows an August vote whose result, which was a victory for President Uhuru Kenyatta, was annulled by the Supreme Court.
The opposition boycott will almost certainly hand victory to Kenyatta, but with a mandate compromised by low turnout.
Those shortcomings, already acknowledged by judges and the election commission, are likely to trigger legal challenges. And it seems the predicted violence has begun as Kenyan police fired tear gas and opposition supporters threw stones in Nairobi’s Kibera slum.
Police arrived early in the morning to disperse protesters and remove stones, which had been piled in front of the gate of the Kibera school-turned-polling station, in a bid to stop voters coming to cast their ballots.
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