from: maina ndiritu

It was the Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi who famously remarked
that when a big tree falls, the earth must shake a little.

The March 4 presidential election was in effect a two-horse race
between two formidable politicians with a history of family rivalry
and boasting very strong constituencies.

As we now know, Uhuru Kenyatta triumphed over Raila Odinga. But, as
one would expect, the fall of a giant of Kenyan politics such as Mr
Odinga has not gone down well among many of his most ardent
supporters, including vocal sections of the civil society.

This is to be expected. Across the world, closely contested elections
are always followed by a period of recriminations and some bitterness.

The difference between more advanced democracies and Kenya, though, is
that society does not seek to destroy its institutions because of an
election outcome that some do not like.

Any rational observer will understand that it was not the Independent
Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) or the Supreme Court which
decided the March 4 election.

It was a solid plurality of the 12.3 million voters who turned out –
more than 800,000 – who decided that Mr Kenyatta would be the nation’s
fourth president.

All the observer reports are now in. In all the analyses about the
election, it should never be forgotten that this was an exercise which
attracted an unprecedented level of scrutiny being the first poll
after the 2007/8 crisis.

In total, there were a record 21,554 accredited domestic observers and
1,834 international observers (in addition to 6,327 local and
international journalists).

To add to this, donors sponsored the Elections Observation Group
(Elog), a coalition of smaller Kenyan organisations, with more than
7,000 observers in all 290 constituencies, which ran a parallel
tallying process.

All the observer missions have delivered the verdict that the election
was free, fair and credible.

None of these reports has been enough to satisfy the groups especially
in civil society, which want nothing short of the disbandment of the
IEBC and who seek to destroy the Supreme Court’s reputation because
voters did not elect their favoured candidate.

Yet if one does not believe the multiple observer mission reports,
they should at least look at the transparent narrative told by the
results of the other contests held on March 4.

The Jubilee coalition defeated the Cord alliance in the races for
Senator, in the contests for Governor, in the battle for Parliament
and in the Women’s Representative elections.

The picture was quite different in 2007. At that time, one could see
merit in Mr Odinga’s claim in disputing the presidential election
results. In that election, Mr Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement
(ODM) won a comfortable majority in the race for Parliament.

This year, the race for Speaker of the Senate and Parliament was
hardly a contest. Jubilee easily won the seat in both houses.

When any objective observer sits down to write the story of the 2013
Kenyan election, the verdict will ultimately be that the Jubilee
coalition simply outwitted their rivals and registered their
supporters in superior numbers.

They won the election long before any votes had been cast simply by
borrowing from Barack Obama’s playbook and understanding the power of
mobilisation.

Mr Odinga is understandably not best pleased with the result. But his
claim in a recent interview that it was not Cord’s job to get their
supporters to register and that task was the IEBC’s duty demonstrates
his failure to understand how to win a modern election.

It starts with mobilisation and encouraging turnout, an issue
illustrated most starkly by the contest between Mr Obama and Mitt
Romney in the US.

Were there some irregularities in the conduct of the election? Of
course there were. No exercise at such a scale could have been devoid
of some hiccups.

And these were spread across the country.

It is noteworthy that a court heard testimony on oath this past week
that dead voters were among those who took part in the election in
Kasipul Kabondo where Mr Odinga was the strongest candidate.

However, the Supreme Court’s main finding was that there was no
evidence of some grand conspiracy to favour one candidate or the other
at the IEBC.

The European Union found that any discrepancies between the
presidential vote and the contest for other seats amounted to less
than 1 per cent of the total votes.

In effect, the constant complaints about the election outcome reflect
disappointment with the result. This is a valid position in a
democracy.

But it would be sheer folly if simply because of the fall of the big
tree that is Mr Odinga institutions such as the IEBC and the Supreme
Court are forced to fall with him.

Jacqueline Kandagor is a social and cultural commentator kandagor@gmail.com