NAIROBI:William Ruto was proclaimed the winner of Kenya’s hard-fought presidential election on Monday, sparking a rift in the electoral commission and some violent protests in his lost rival’s strongholds.
Ruto received 50.49 percent of the vote on August 9, just ahead of Raila Odinga, who received 48.85 percent, according to Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission chairman Wafula Chebukati, following an agonising days-long wait for results.
With emotions high following the disputed election result, the 55-year-old president-elect vowed to engage with “all leaders.””There is no room for vengeance,” Ruto declared. “I am acutely aware that our country is at a point where all hands must be on deck.”Correspondents claimed that police fired live rounds as protests erupted in an Odinga stronghold in Nairobi.
Police also used tear gas in Kisumu, his lakeside bastion, where protesters flung stones and created roadblocks made of enormous slabs of rock. “We were taken advantage of,” Isaac Onyango, 24, said on a street blocked off by two enormous bonfires and broken stones.
