Thursday, December 27, 2007

So far we have quiet on the eastern front.

So far, so good - although of course i shouldn't speak too soon - but generally it seems that voting is peaceful throughout the country.

There were a few little set backs in the morning when some of the polling stations opened very late, due to various reasons such as the polling clerks not turning up or the polling register gone missing. Then up to fifteen of the wards (at last count), had to cancel their civic elections as some of the candidates were missing from the ballot paper. But no matter it seems, as in those areas they could still vote for their parliamentary candidate and the most important matter to hand - the presidency so they all seemed to be fairly satisfied with that.

It got slightly tricky in Langata, (an area in Nairobi), when Raila Odinga (one of the main two candidates up for the presidential seat), arrived at his local polling station to vote - at a pre-advertised, nice civilised hour of the day, with lots of pomp and ceremony - and his name was left out of the electoral register.

Anyway a couple of phone calls were made and a lot of shouting was done, and then an irate Mr Odinga leapt into his car and sped up to the Kenyatta Conference Centre where the election commission is holed up and jumped up and down outside their offices demanding to see somebody in charge.

He was then duly informed that the situation would be immediately rectified, (and not to get his knickers in such a twist), and that the electoral roll with his name on would be printed out 'tout suite' and by the time he got back to his polling station would be ready and waiting for him, and off he sped again, with a convoy of about 12 vehicles, one of which narrowly missed a rather bemused electoral official who was trying to chase after the cars to give them what i can only assume was the print out of the missing page with Mr Odinga's name on it.

So apart from that little mishap, and a couple of the electoral rolls for different regions ending up being sent in the completely wrong direction - such as the one for an area at the coast ending up in Kajiado - which is a town in the far north of Kenya and one of the polling registers that was supposed to go to Eldoret ending up in Naivasha, (around 200kms south of where it should have been), things seem to be going fairly well.

So its fingers crossed and see what happens as the day draws to a close.

2 comments:

Gorilla Bananas said...

I take it you'll settle for any outcome that doesn't result in civil strife.

Mzungu Chick said...

Absolutely Mr Bananas. I'm not convinced by either's policies so peace is all I'm after.