Can the mood in Azimio and Kenya Kwanza tell us who will be the 5th President of Kenya?

Baba the 5th? Ruto the 5th? We still don’t know the answer to that. Going by the numbers in the three TV stations, Ruto is ahead of Raila by 8,552 votes, 67,685 votes, and 9,992 votes according to tallying numbers over at Citizen TV, NTV and KTN respectively. By the time of penning this article, Citizen TV had taken down their tallying portal that was hosted on the Citizen Digital website. These numbers strongly suggest that Ruto ought to become the 5th President of Kenya. My own analysis that I have mentioned in this article and this other article also points towards a Ruto win. But does the mood in Kenya Kwanza support the notion that Ruto will become the 5th President of Kenya?

Political analysts especially those based on YouTube (Lee Mwakiny, The Bold, etc) are of the opinion that both Raila Odinga and William Ruto already know who the 5th President of Kenya is. I tend to agree with them given the fact that the presidential results from 46,201 polling stations out of 46,229 polling stations have already been uploaded on the IEBC portal. Now, assuming all those forms are genuine IEBCE forms, and that there are no grave errors in the forms that can substantially affect the presidential results, then someone with about 600 clerks can add up those figures within two hours. That is, in two hours from the time 99% of forms 34A were uploaded on the IEBC portal, both Kenya Kwanza and Azimio ought to have known the final results. I want to assume that this is the case and consequently presume that knowing the final results will affect the mood in both camps, and that mood should indicate to us who the 5th President of Kenya is.

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The mood in Kenya Kwanza is currently being displayed by Dennis Itumbi who appears to be in charge of Kenya Kwanza’s tallying centre. If you follow the posts by Dennis Itumbi, you must have realised a number of things:

  1. The first thing you’ll realise from Itumbi’s posts is tallying numbers that upon closer scrutiny have grave mistakes. As an example, Itumbi tweeted final tallying figures to be 7,158,108 votes in favour of William Ruto and 6,920,084 votes in favour of Raila Odinga. The problem with the tweet is that the numbers are obtained from 46,233 polling stations when the maximum number of polling stations is 46,229 (Prisons and Diaspora included). One may wonder where Dennis Itumbi obtained the 3 extra polling stations from.
  2. The second thing you’ll notice, still based on the numbers, is that different Kenya Kwanza bloggers are sharing different winning margins for William Ruto. The tweet alluded to above for example gives William Ruto a win with 50.5% of the votes, when other bloggers by Kenya Kwanza are sharing winning margins of up to 52% based on their alleged final tally.
  3. The next thing you will notice is the speed with which Itumbi wants to create unnecessary tension by alleging that Kenya Kwanza is under attack by the State. For example, he tweeted that the State had kidnapped UDA Communications Director DP Ruto’s chief of staff.
  4. The last thing you will notice is the constant revelation by Itumbi of attempted interference of the electoral process by the State, manipulated figures in form 34As, and the hand of the state in the stoppage of tallying process by the media houses. Within this theme was the fracas at Bomas that was caused by Kenya Kwanza agents who alleged that there were attempts by some people to smuggle in fake form 34Bs.
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According to me, the mood portrayed above doesn’t appear to be a mood of someone who is confident of their win, but a mood of someone who is unsure, scared, or even terrified. Some of the fears expressed by Dennis Itumbi could be based on valid points, but those that are based on alleged discrepancies in forms 34A appear to be moods of someone collecting data to be presented at the Supreme Court.

The mood from Azimio’s side appears to be totally opposite to the mood in Kenya Kwanza. The mood in Azimio can be judged by tweets from Makau Mutua, Edwin Sifuna, and the appearance of Rafael Tuju at the Bomas of Kenya. After a long silence, Makau Mutua tweeted to state that Azimio supporters ought to be assured that he is working hard and will speak when there is something to say. “In the meantime, let’s all watch, follow, and verify what’s happening. Let me assure Kenyans and our supporters that we remain OPTIMISTIC”, he said. He further tweeted to say that Azimio is still bullish – a word borrowed from the stock market jargon to indicate an “all is well” attitude.

Edwin Sifuna on the other hand had shared data he alleged to have come from Azimio tallying centre a Raila lead with 51.96% of the vote by the time 97% of the polling stations had reported. Later, he tweeted new figures from 46,142 polling stations (87 polling stations were yet to report) indicating a Raila lead with 50.13% of the vote. The gap Raila had given Ruto according to that tweet is 247,000 plus votes, a gap that could not be bridged by the maximum of 60,900 votes that were still pending. As opposed to Itumbi, Edwin Sifuna and Makau Mutua haven’t been all over social media making allegations that turn out to be false or alarming.

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In addition to the calm mood that has been portrayed by Azimio spokespersons and bloggers, the Azimio secretariat has gone ahead to set up a red-carpeted media centre at KICC that has both VIP and VVIP sections. This media centre made Azimio supporters celebrate outside KICC.

In conclusion, if mood alone was to be used to judge who will be the 5th President of Kenya, I would say the person will be Raila Amollo Odinga. However, data that has been tallied by media houses still point towards William Samoei Ruto as the favourite to become the 5th President of Kenya.

Odipo Riaga
Managing Editor at KachTech Media
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