Friday, December 28, 2007

Not sure that the Reuters report has it right.


Headlines from Reuters Africa show this .....................


Kibaki leads Kenya election - exit poll
Thu 27 Dec 2007, 17:16 GMT

By Andrew Cawthorne and Wangui Kanina
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya's President Mwai Kibaki leads Thursday's presidential election with 47.4 percent of the vote, versus 42.7 for opposition leader Raila Odinga, according to an exit poll by a local independent observer group.
The Institute for Education in Democracy (IED), a respected non-governmental organisation, gave the figures -- which it was constantly updating on its Web site -- at 8 p.m. (1700 GMT) based on more than 260 polling stations out of 20,000.


However word on the ground this morning, (although only about 10% of all votes counted so far), is that Raila has it by something like 62% to Kibaki at around 36%.

This of course could dramatically change as it depends which districts haven't yet sent in their numbers as if it's Western Kenya - they'll be Raila votes and if its Eastern it'll most definitely be Kibaki ones.

So we're all still on a wait and see.

Things seem pretty peaceful. I have come into town to my office and the roads are very quiet. There are a few police cars on the road and i did see one truck full of riot police heading out of town with lights flashing, but i'm not sure that this isn't more of just being vigilant rather than actual trouble brewing, as things are quite tense.

What i must say though with this election is that i think overall we have most defintely had less goons handing over cash and pollling stations which is great news and a lot of young people have voted for the first time and seem to have done so without the tribal lines that are usually drawn with regards to the candidates with the older generation.

SO all in all things may just be looking up.

Will keep you updated as and when I hear anything!

2 comments:

Gorilla Bananas said...

"a lot of young people have voted for the first time and seem to have done so without the tribal lines"

Now that is good news. Maybe of the benefits of globalisation is that Africans will discards such divisive traditions.

Mzungu Chick said...

Totally with you there Mr Bananas. Less tribalism can only be a good thing whoever wins it.