Mark Twain once said, "Do the right thing. It will gratify some and astonish the rest." I remembered this quote when I started reflecting on what transpired in Kenya during the referendum. I'm sure many Kenyans and our friends abroad have equally had time to reflect on the unprecedented transformation that seemed to have taken place in the way we conduct our elections.

Yet, as I wrote this article, I found it difficult to come to terms with the thought that just two years ago, we conducted our national elections using tired old men whose idea of new technology stopped at the landline and the fax machine. How did we so swiftly move from Stone Age election Management System to the 21st Century electronic device? Were these facilities available two years ago? How could we have made such a leap of faith in such a short time?

Ahmed Issack Hassan, his commissioners and the secretariat made this leap for two reasons.

The leadership of the IIEC was young and exposed. But more importantly, they were not afraid to take the leap of faith into the world of new technology.

Apart from being adventurous, they seemed to have bought into the idea that being in the Knowledge Age, they were aware that knowledge is no longer the power source to be hoarded.

In the present world, knowledge is like fresh milk that must be used on time or it goes sour. For this reason, they realised that it was better to share the referendum results with all Kenyans and indeed the rest of the world in real time. And in so doing, they would kill two birds with one stone; increase transparency and accountability as they restored public confidence in Kenya's electoral process.

When Issack and his team decided to equip every polling station with an electronic gadget, link it to the constituency tallying centre then to the National Tallying Centre in Nairobi, they inadvertently networked the whole country. And with this little device, two thirds of votes cast were all in Nairobi and known to Kenyans and the rest of the world in two hours after the poll stations closed down.

At the beginning I was very concerned about the way the three main media stations were relaying the results. At some point, Citizen TV was showing that Greens had 41,420 Votes as Reds trailed with 17,111. At that moment, KTN was showing 49,506 for Greens as the Reds trailed behind with 12,532. Mean-while on NTV screen, Greens had 38,315 votes counted as the Reds trailed with 17,759 votes cast.

It was only after the IIEC reigned in on these networks and ordered that they could only relay what the IIEC screen was showing that order returned to the relief of many viewers. And it was better that IIEC took that decision because at that moment they were miles ahead with their tallying already clocking 1.7 million votes for the Greens against close to 1 million votes for the Reds. But more importantly, these distorted figures could have sent viewers thinking that someone was up to some mischief with the results.

Although the three main TV networks fumbled at the beginning with numbers and graphics that were hardly visible, they eventually put their act together and conducted a superb vote monitoring.

Yet with all this elaborate technological and logistical preparation, it was difficult to understand why 24 hours after the poll stations closed, the IIEC could still not receive official results from returning officers in three constituencies. Even more intriguing was the fiasco at Embakasi Dooholm polling station where close to 1,000 voters went away because their names were not on the voters' register. And even when they were finally allowed to vote, it took forever to finish voting in that centre.

Indeed when late in the night the Reds complained of electronic transmission of votes from the polling stations, Issack stood his ground and reminded them that "politicians don't conduct elections; they contest them. It is the work of the IIEC to conduct elections."

There was one peculiar thing that happened with this referendum. Much as the international media descended on Nairobi and other so-called hot spots hoping for another round of mayhem as happened in 2007, they folded their cameras and took off when they realised that Kenyans had decided to vote peacefully.

By midday the next day, there was hardly any news on the referendum in international networks. Just goes to show that only violence sell for Western media.

Yet to a discerning news hunter, there were many peculiar aspects of this referendum they could have reported on. The death of a returning officer, an IIEC hired boat near capsizing across River Tana, election vehicles getting stuck in impassable roads and the use of donkeys to transport voting materials in Northern Kenya could still have intrigued the civilised world.

The writer is a media consultant.

As concerns the recent referendum on the proposed new constitution, I would say that there was no greater winner, at the purely political level, than Higher Education Minister William Ruto.

For the fact that he was able to unite behind him virtually all the voters from the Kalenjin community leaves no doubt that his leadership has been massively endorsed at the grassroots level within that community.

And so he now joins the handful of political leaders in our country's history who have been able to personify the political aspirations of a major ethnic community.

But what does this all mean?

Well, first let me outline the limits of Ruto's newly affirmed political clout. And on this I would quote the English political philosopher, Francis Bacon. His most famous saying is "Knowledge is Power". But he also pointed out, more specifically, that "The rising unto place is laborious; and by pains men come to greater pains;.... All rising to great place is by a winding stair."

This translated from Bacon's 15th century vocabulary into modern English, roughly means, "Getting ahead in politics is not that easy, and is definitely not a simple and straightforward process. Just when you think you have made some major progress, you generally find that all you have really done is to move into a different league, where everything will be even more
difficult."

So in Ruto's case, the undeniable fact is that he has at last moved from the "second division" of political players in Kenya, to the "first division". In the race for political influence, the kind of influence which is based on the total voting power that a candidate can command, he has overtaken not only Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka but also both Deputy Prime Ministers Uhuru Kenyatta and Musalia Mudavadi.

For where Kalonzo, Uhuru and Musalia can all still be humiliated by a visceral political enemy getting elected in their own backyard, that is not the case with Ruto: even the most "senior" cabinet ministers, who opposed him in the referendum, found that they could not gather any meaningful support within their own constituencies.

But none of this means that he can now relax and enjoy his newfound status: rather he now has his work cut out for him, in trying to apply his political clout to some effective purpose. And I should point out that getting any Kenyan ethnic community to focus on the idea that they have been despised, or taken for granted, or in some way been "used and dumped" by other groups, is one of the easier ways to gain their political support.

In Coast Province, the Gender, Children and Social Development minister Naomi Shaban used this tactic in 2007 to unite the indigenous Taveta community in opposition to what was seen as the inappropriate political ambitions of the "guest communities" in Taveta constituency (the Kamba, Luo and Kikuyu) who had all fielded candidates in past elections.

Then more recently Trade minister Ali Mwakwere, who had barely survived the "ODM wave" in 2007, gained a resounding victory in the Matuga constituency by-election just a few months ago, by igniting simmering resentments among his Digo ethnic group, that they have often been stereotyped as "lazy, cowardly and poor" by their fellow-Muslims, the more prosperous Swahili and Arab communities of Mombasa.

But then, we further note that it took just two years for Shaban to lose the support of the electorate in Taveta: despite her most vigorous efforts to see the new constitution rejected, they solidly supported it. To the extent that she is now seen to be so completely "finished" politically, that her rivals are falling over each other to try and replace her, and can barely wait for 2012 to complete the process of consigning her to political obscurity.

Much the same applies to Mwakwere: he cannot hope to win in a General Election, merely by stigmatising other coastal Muslim communities who are alleged to have a contemptuous attitude towards the Digo.

What had made him vulnerable in 2007 was that he was considered to have a "poor development record" as we say here in Kenya. And unless he can change that perception among the ordinary voters of Matuga, they will most likely end his political career in 2012.

This brings us back to Ruto. For now, he has succeeded in taking away from PM Raila Odinga some of his most devout supporters of the 2007 General Election. But it was the PM's own blunders which made this possible in the first place. And if Ruto should end up backing the losing horse in the General Election of 2012 or fail badly in an attempt to be elected President himself that would change everything.

The writer comments on topical issues.

“We knew we would lose, but we were performing our 'prophetic' role," say the Church leaders.

The Churches must not flatter themselves. The Church's prophetic role is to interpret the will of God. What they were doing was not that. They were interpreting the will of men. Specifically, that of one, a legal draftsman. They were interpreting a constitutional draft. Lawyers call that statutory interpretation.

Lawyers do not interpret the Bible by the rules of statutory interpretation. They would get it wrong. Churchmen, similarly, should not have interpreted statute by the rules of Biblical interpretation. They did get it wrong. Those words, for example, do not mean that same-sex marriages are permitted.

Nor can they claim that they only acted as they did after great soul-searching and long and earnest prayer, through which God showed them the direction. This alibi failed long ago.

During the Indian freedom struggle against the British, Gandhi on being told that the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, always prayed to God before taking any major decision, once remarked, "What a pity God gives him such bad advice."

If the Churchmen thought bad judges would interpret the new provisions badly, then the best protection was to support the new Constitution because it provided for a way to vet out 'bad judges'.

If inert words of the new constitution on paper, "will," as the Churches say, "foster moral decadence and dehumanise Kenyan society", it is an admission by them, the custodians of Kenya's morals, that their ministry over the last hundred years has not been successful; and that they are helpless to prevent this decadent decline in the future.

The sad truth is the Churches came out to play politics on the constitutional field. They used every political trick they thought politicians use: they cosied up to dubious churchmen, they cosied up to dubious politicians, they cosied up to dubious money, they cosied up to dubious versions of the 'truth'. They bought hugely expensive prime time television advertisements, they went back on their word, they were unrestrained in their language, they encouraged fronts like 'Religious Professionals' to lie on their behalf, they committed many, many fouls. Yet, they lost the game. Badly : 6-3.

No wonder they are angry at the referee, the people of Kenya. And are shouting at them. (See The Standard, 9 August 2010.) Exactly, like the World Cup players who shouted at the referee after the match that exited them. The result of the Referendum on August 5 was for Kenya even better than the World Cup result was for Spain. Spain and Kenya have not stopped celebrating since their respective results.

The Churches also claimed that the Committee of Experts was wrong and had not reflected the will of the people of Kenya. Intellectual honesty requires that the Church leaders now acknowledge publicly that it is the Committee of Experts that reflected the will of the people correctly, and that they, the Church leaders, got it wrong.

There were only two reasons that the Churches irresponsible actions did not cause more harm to Kenya. The first is that many worshippers saw through them. The flock politely disregarded the Churchmen's threats. It made its own political decisions. It voted with quiet, but emphatic, confidence.

The second reason is that others in the faiths world, and in politics, acted extremely responsibly, so much more responsibly than these Church leaders. No wonder a poll a few days ago showed that Kenyans now trust politicians more than they trust the Church. One cannot get any lower than that. The Churches ought to be concerned.

Come to think of it, many World Cup teams sacked their managers after their loss. Maybe, the Kenyan church also needs a change of managers ?

Or maybe, the Church and its losing politician team mates are planning to ask FIFA to move amendments to the results. They may want FIFA to take into account all the goals all the losing sides scored, which are of course more than Spain scored in total, and give half of Spain's trophy to the 35 losers?

After all, they tell us we cannot ignore those who lost if they are so numerous. But we remember that when Moi won his presidential elections with only 38 per cent in 1992, and only 40 per cent in 1997, (minority presidencies, if ever), Gideon Moi, Nick Salat, Joseph Kimkung, William Ruto and the Kalenjin Elders all failed to ask Moi to share the government with the numerous 60 per cent who had lost.

The writer is a lawyer.

At last, Kenyans have decided that the old order must be history. The era of the imperial presidency and parliamentary dictatorship must be put behind us now. It is a feeling one gets after having had a good but gruelling fight.

With seven out of eight provinces voting for the new constitution, no sensible individual can fault Kenyans for demanding the necessary reforms in the new constitution.

After the votes were tallied, the Greens had a clear win by garnering more than 3 million votes above the Reds. At 70 per cent vote win, the Reds cannot claim unfairness.

And with international observers everywhere monitoring every step from the polling stations to the electronic relay centres and finally to the National Tallying Centre at the Bomas, this win is as convincing as any democratic process can be. As at 2.15pm, the Yes votes had reached 5,482, 698 and still counting against the Green side's 2,418,153 votes.

As a campaigner and a voter for the new constitution, I feel good because we decided to change our fortunes drastically. We learnt a bitter lesson in the 2007-2008 post-election violence when, due the recklessness of our leaders and poll referees, we subjected our people to unnecessary pain and conflict. And if there is one thing that this new constitution will be able to do, it will deal a deadly blow to the culture of impunity that has brought our country to its knees in the eyes of the international community.

As Kenyans, we can stand tall again and claim our place of pride among the community of nations. We have proved that we can reclaim our lost glory as a proud and democratic country capable of making our own decisions. This pride should be shared with all our member states of the East African Community and the rest of Africa at large.

The fact that nine million Kenyans woke up at dawn to line up and vote in the chilly weather and did so peacefully is a testimony that we have learnt something from our ugly recent past.

The 2007 elections were largely messed up by the political power elite that thought it unthinkable to have a peaceful regime change.

The nature of our culture of impunity where the political leadership exploited and oppressed the masses made it impossible for a clean political contest to take place. In the end, we had organised militias in the payrolls of political warlords take over our lives. We had all our highways blocked by hired goons and millions of shillings lost in burnt homes and property. A fresh ugly face of impunity gained currency causing the deaths of 1,500 innocent Kenyans while causing thousands more homeless.

Despite spirited and acrimonious campaigns in the run up to this year's referendum, the tones of our political leaders changed drastically to that of reconciliation urging Kenyans to vote peacefully.

And the fact that Kenyans chose to heed the peace calls from President Kibaki, Prime Minister Raila, former President Moi and the Reds leader William Ruto was a clear demonstration that it is the politicians who always incite voters to go to the streets.

This time round, they called on them to remain calm despite the outcome which they obediently did.

As I wrote this article, something else happened in our election process that was not there in 2007. The Reds leader called a press conference and conceded defeat 18 hours after the polls closed. This early conceding of defeat even before the final votes were tallied indicated that politically we were coming of age.

The last time we had this kind of gesture was in 2002 when Uhuru Kenyatta conceded defeat against Kibaki.

However, in this early analysis of our referendum results, credit must go to the Interim Independent Electoral Commission led by Issack Hassan for running the polls as professionally as they could ever do.

The mere fact that the Commission went electronic in relaying provisional results right from the polling stations to the National Tallying Centre in Nairobi despite opposition from the Reds in itself speaks volumes.

The mere fact that these provisional results were also availed to all media networks was a plus in the process. This decision made Kenyans and the rest of the world to follow the proceedings in detail and this implied transparency and accountability made it impossible for anybody to even think of rigging the polls.

There is one incident that happened in Western Kenya that served as a lesson to would-be election riggers. A poll supervisor who announced the wrong results was immediately arrested by a presiding officer and instantly appeared in court yesterday morning. It is this kind of act that can clean Kenya's politics.

If this Kenyan experience cannot be a good lesson to the rest of Africa, then it is difficult to know what can be called good best practice for the rest of the continent to emulate.

The writer is a media consultant.

The popular verdict is in. The overwhelming majority of Kenyans have spoken. The commanding victory margin demonstrates beyond doubt that Kenyans have rejected the old retrogressive constitution in favour of the new one. They have rejected lies and propaganda and chosen the truth. They did so with their votes, as required in a democratic exercise. The process was free, fair, transparent and democratic. It was also peaceful. The tallying of votes was conducted in a transparent manner. The results, therefore, are not in dispute.

But this victory is just the beginning of a long process of social, cultural, economic, political, legal and institutional reconstruction.

For the past fifty years, Kenyans have undergone gross human rights violations, economic and political crimes. Rules, laws and the constitution had little meaning to the majority. Political power and money were elevated to become gods and worshipped. The economy stalled. Infrastructure decayed. Life became a burden for the majority. Only a tiny minority benefited from the country's abundant resources. For fifty years, Kenyans have been a disillusioned lot.

Each time they have had legitimate expectations of prosperity, a functioning governing system and a responsive leadership; their hopes have been dashed.

The new constitution promises to turn things around. If implemented fully and promptly, the problems of the past might be discarded for ever. Are Kenyans up to the challenge?

The implementation is a daunting task, full of both promises and dangers. But the critical thing Kenyans must appreciate is that a constitution is an organic document. It must be read, understood and implemented as a whole. One cannot cherry-pick bits and pieces depending on one's personal desires. It is imperative that implementation be conducted with equal emphasis to all parts of the constitution.

In other words, the fundamental rights and freedoms enshrined in the new supreme law apply equally to a 'Green' and to a 'Red' or 'Watermelon.' Discrimination is illegal regardless of how one voted. But the main problem emerges with implementation. It is reasonable to assume that those who were opposed to the new constitution will not stop opposing merely because they have lost.

In as much as the new constitution is for all Kenyans, those responsible for its implementation must, of necessity, be people who strongly and unequivocally supported its ratification. It would be dangerous to place opponents of the constitution in charge of giving it life and meaning.

Many senior government officials - particularly cabinet ministers, assistant ministers, permanent secretaries and heads of state corporations - openly opposed and campaigned against the draft. They ought not to be responsible for any aspects of implementation. This would avoid creating opportunities for opponents of the draft to sabotage its implementation to prove that it is 'unworkable.'

Moreover, the constitution itself makes clear that certain key government posts need to be cleansed from entrenched bureaucratic forces. That is why it requires prompt replacements for the Attorney General, Chief Justice, Director General of the NSIS, head of police, administration police and prosecutorial services, Auditor General and other key positions.

The new constitution creates mechanisms for its implementation. It prescribes how new institutions will be established and staffed. For instance, it deliberately prescribes that the Constitutional Implementation Oversight Committee be formed by Parliament. But this is a new creature, distinct from the Parliamentary Select Committee which is deemed to have died a natural death on August 4.

The Constitutional Implementation Oversight Committee is like an advisory board in a company. It is supposed to advise, not run the company on a daily basis.

The core business of implementing the constitution has been vested in the Commission for the Implementation of the Constitution. Then there are other constitutional bodies like the National Land Commission; the Commission on Revenue Allocation Commission; the National Police Service Commission; the Public Service Commission; the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission; the Judicial Service Commission; the Public Service Commission; the Salaries and Remuneration Commission; the Kenya National Human Rights and Equity Commission; the Parliamentary Service Commission; the Teachers Service Commission; and the National Police Service Commission.

These are all independent constitutional bodies. In addition to the creation of the Supreme Court and the restructuring of the entire judiciary, the constitution provides for the roles of the executive, the National Assembly and the people. In this arrangement (except as provided for by the constitution itself), the executive chooses; the legislature vets; and the people hold those appointed to account. It is therefore important for each institution or office of state to recognise its role under the constitution to avoid unnecessary conflicts or attempts at the usurpation of power.

Kenyans must demand that implementation be done by competent ethical and skilled professionals. If implemented properly, past wrongs and misadventures will be buried forever. However, if implementation is mishandled or sabotaged, the constitution might turn out to be just another exercise in conmanship That must never happen.

The writer is the PM's adviser. The views expressed here are his own.

Although at the time of writing this, the results of the referendum are not yet out, I think it is safe to assume that you will be learning in the course of the day that Kenyans voted to emphatically usher in a new constitutional dispensation.

This new constitution brings us very close to becoming a federal state. That is its key defining feature, which all the other major changes spring from.

In Kenya, we are accustomed to thinking of federal systems of government in terms of large nations like the US, Australia, Germany, Canada or closer to home, Nigeria. But there is Switzerland, a really small country, which has only seven million people. Yet it too is a federal state. And it has no less than 26 Cantons, which are the approximate equivalent of the counties that we will soon have under the new constitution.

So, for all intents and purposes, we now live in the Federal Republic of Kenya. But what does this really mean?

Well, for now let me focus on the good news, and say that we should be grateful that our new devolved administrative units are based on the old districts and not the provinces.

If the counties had been fewer and larger, it would have had the effect of legitimising and entrenching the "regional power brokers" or "tribal chiefs" who have perfected the art of uniting their tribesmen under the banner of resisting "marginalisation", and then proceeding to use the voting power of these regional blocks to serve their personal agenda.

This theatrical "resistance" to marginalisation would be harmless enough were it not for the fact that it usually involves the victimisation and stigmatisation of the minority "non-indigenous" communities in those areas.

So we should be glad to see an end to it.

The other good news is that there will be many more opportunities for leadership for the civic-minded 'among us.

In the past the only path to a meaningful role in national politics was through seeking a parliamentary seat, usually with the secret hope of finding your way to the Cabinet. But now there are all those governorships and deputy governorships, and county speaker, and senate speaker, and senators, and so on.

Out of all these, the one which will be most deeply coveted will be the governorships. As far as I can understand it, the new governors will be much like the Kenyatta-era provincial commissioners, only they will be popularly elected, and they will be more.

For the sake of younger readers, I should explain that our founding president borrowed heavily from the colonial governors, in deciding how to rule Kenya. And he governed most visibly through the provincial administration which had barely changed from the colonial administrative structure he inherited.

And in those days the PCs were so often in the news, and they were such dominant public figures that they were as well known as ministers and even more powerful. But the new governors will have something that even those powerful PCs of old did not have: a constitutionally-mandated allocation from the national budget. They will therefore be the immediate means of salvation for their people, and will - to a large extent - determine whether their part of the country will prosper or stagnate.

Any really influential politician would obviously choose to be a governor, rather than one of almost 300 legislators, trying to get a hearing on the floor of Parliament.

Now in those countries with existing federal structures of government, it is the norm that those who wish to rise to higher office must first prove themselves in the successful management of public affairs at the regional level.

And although the most recent US presidential election featured two senators (Obama and McCain) it is usually former governors who end up president in that country George W Bush (former Governor of Texas); Bill Clinton (Arkansas); Ronald Reagan (California) and Jimmy Carter (Georgia).

So a few years from now, we may well have a situation where we can judge what a presidential candidate can do for the country, based on a proven track record of effective governance at the county level.

And that would certainly be a step forward. In the present situation, we tend to vote for the most effective campaigner, rather than the leader with the best track record.

The writer comments on topical issues.

For the past two weeks, the most important trials since the Kenyatta trial at Kapenguria in 1952-3, have been going on. Like the Kapenguria trial, the importance did not lie in the charges in the cases. In both sets of cases, these were inadequate to support the orders sought. Their importance lay in the possible serious and adverse consequences to the people of Kenya.

There were four petitions before the Interim Independent Constitutional Dispute Resolution Court sitting at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre. They were deciding on matters that had the potential to drive away the high-profile campaigns from the headlines. This because the petitions were asking the Court to postpone or cancel the Referendum to be held on August 4, 2010.

These petitions had the potential to bring to an end all the efforts of the present constitutional review process. They had the potential to dash the hopes of millions of Kenyans, and prevent constitutional review for the next twenty years.

They could condemn us to continuing with the old constitution which had proven defective to prevent the events of 2007-8. The review process emerged out of the National Accord to prevent a recurrence in 2012 of the violence and breakdown of 2007-8. Thus, the postponement or cancellation of the Referendum would not only bring down the review process, but the National Accord itself. All this was at stake in the four petitions.

Some of the petitions were brought by a combination of interests opposed to change in Kenya. They furthered partisan interests and not the national interest. They challenged the new constitution on many grounds, among them diaspora voting, abortion and kadhis' courts.

One petition wanted the Court to draft multiple-choice questions for the referendum. The most common complaint was that the petitioners' views were not incorporated in the new constitution and therefore the Committee of Experts or the Parliamentary Select Committee had acted unlawfully.

The Court delivered its judgments early this week, the judges in each case taking turns to read the two-hour long judgments.

Several petitioners had asked the Court to expunge, add, suspend, reject, or rectify various sections of the Proposed Constitution. Some petitioners wanted the words 'national security' put in as a ground to deny human rights. These, it will be remembered, were the very words that were criminally inserted at the Government Printers, exposed and rejected.

The Court held it had no power to excise or to add to the document. The Court drew an analogy with 1 Corinthians 12.12. The document had to go to the referendum as an integral product of the organs of review. The Court was not an organ of review.

The Court examined the steps taken by the Committee of Experts at every stage. It considered the joint statement published with the Reference Group, which consisted of representatives of every sector of Kenyan society, including many of the churches.

It checked on the statutory methodology which the Committee of Experts used to determine what constituted contentious issues for .the purposes of the review act. This was because the statutory meaning of those two words differed from what lay persons would expect.

It did not simply mean any strongly contested issue. It meant the issues that had not emerged from consensus on the past drafts, (such as Bomas and Wako). The Court then held that it was satisfied the experts had acted correctly and not in violation of anyone's rights.

The review act and the constitution had given discretion to the experts. The Court held that the experts had to take into account more than only the differing and hotly contested views of various groups, including the petitioners.

The experts had to take into account a large number of other factors set out in Sections 25, 4 and 6 of the review act, including most importantly, national cohesion. The Court held that the discretion had been reasonably exercised.

The petitions asked the Court to make decisions on the content of the Proposed Constitution, on what should be in and not be in the draft.

The Court held that this was not its role, but was that of the organs of review culminating in the people through the referendum. "The Court cannot have a role higher than the people in this [constitution-making] process. It would amount to a judicial coup on the people's constituent power."

The Court finally held that no basis had been established by the petitioners to order any postponement or cancellation of the Referendum.

The writer is a lawyer.

Kenyans enjoyed a peaceful referendum day with no major incidents reported. The IIEC has done a good job so far. Wednesday 4th August was declared a public holiday to enable Kenyans to vote for or against the Kenya constitution. 27689 polling stations opened up at 6pm and closed at 5pm. There are no incidences of violence reported so far.

Vote counting is underway with live and real time results being streamed live at the IIEC tallying centre at the Bomas of Kenya. Security has been beefed up by the GSU around Bomas.

As at 3 pm this afternoon, most stations had reported 50% turnout.

Nairobi - 60

Coast - Malindi Region - 30%

Coast - Mombasa - 60%

Rift Valley - Central/South Rift - 50%

Rift Valley - North Rift - 60%

Rift Valley - Baringo Constituency - 30%
Rift Valley - Kacheliba 10%

Central Province - above 50%
Central Province - Nyeri/Thika regions reported over 70%

North Eastern - Over 45%

Eastern Province - over 50%

Eastern Province - Lowe Eastern - over 70%

Western Province - Bungoma Region - 40%

Western Province - Kakamega Region - over 50%

Nyanza Province - Kisumu Region - 85%
Nyanza Province - Kisii Region - 80%