Kenya elections

In Kenya, "tunawezi wait" - a phrase invented for Ballot 2013 - is cool speak for "we can wait" and it was the text sent to millions of mobile phone users during election week. Repeatedly, word went round that this was the most complex election Kenya has ever had.

Actually, it was a rigorous exercise: six election officials gave six ballot papers of different colours to each voter because there was six elections in one (president, senator, governor, parliamentarian, etc). Having ticked the candidate of their choice, the voter had to drop each of the six ballots in a box that matches its colour.

Day ends and the counting starts. It was tense. The function of tallying and announcing the results by the IEBC went like a scripted last funeral rites ceremony of the thousands of lives lost in the previous election's aftermath. It took days, longer than was expected to finalise the tallying of the presidential results. When the announcer invited a choir for another song, the audience was filled with disapproving voices.

One could see the uneasy peace, the calm that was not natural at all. We in Uganda, like many people in Kenya and elsewhere, kept hoping that all goes well and peacefully.

The winner was announced. He got 6,123,433 votes out of 12,330,028 valid votes cast - that is less than 50 percent. The case is in court.

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