Kenya
is holding its breath as the blaring speakers of the election campaign cars
finally fall silent ahead of Tuesday's vote.
Ten years ago there
was terrible post-election ethnic violence in the country, which nobody here
wants to see repeated.
But with opinion
polls predicting a very close race between incumbent president Uhuru Kenyatta
and opposition leader Raila Odinga, there are fears there could be trouble
ahead.
What happens to
Kenya is less about who wins the elections and more about how those who lose
take their defeat.
The success of the
Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) computerised voting
system is key to the process being considered free and fair.
If it fails - as it
did in 2013 - the votes will be counted manually, and in a country where
vote-rigging has been alleged in the past, the loser will no doubt challenge
the result.
In 2013, Raila
Odinga turned to the courts claiming electoral fraud, and lost.
This time - his
fourth and probably last attempt to become president - he may turn to the
streets if he considers the election to have been stolen.
In theory, the
voting system is a good one:
Electronic identity
verification should not allow people to vote more than once or the many dead
people on the roll to vote at all
Results will be
announced at the constituency level
Published counts
will be sent digitally to Nairobi to be added up
Election observers
will be at thousands of polling stations
But if the computer
system goes down, verifying the voters' roll will be a lot harder, and may
raise suspicions.
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