I spent the morning listening to gunfire.
ODM and Raila wanted to hold a demonstration in Uhuru Park. They were blocked by a massive police force. They will try again tomorrow.
The guns were apparently fired in the air, and no one killed directly; there was a man electrocuted on Thika Road by a falling cable. It was attributed to a police bullet severing the cable, as no other explanation seemed as likely.
All the news and government statements are calling for "peace" and "negotiation". (Don't get me started on Rice's "spirit of compromise".) Kibaki has had himself sworn in. Meanwhile, the chairman of the Electoral Commission (ECK) has publicly admitted that he does not know who won.
So how about counting the votes?
People in Kenya voted at 22,000+ polling places. For each location and each race, a Form 16/16A was prepared with the totals for President, MP for that Constituency, and local counsellor elections.
Each voter gets 3 ballots, of different colors. Each is placed in a separate box. You can't vote for President, and walk away with the other two ballots in your pocket.
Spoiled ballots are rare, blanks are unheard of, everyone knows the candidates, and votes all 3.
The form 16's are then taken to the ECK in Nairobi by the Returning Officer for the Constituency (MP seat), there are 210 of them.
This is what they took 2 extra days to count. Note that Kibaki appointed 19 of the 22 ECK officers. The chairman was re-appointed. The Parliamentary results were reported without trouble (except Garsen and Starehe, which had dramatic local problems). Then the trouble started. Someone was changing the returns. (BBC has a copy of the Form 16 for Nakuru Town, which was blatantly modified by cramming in a zero to change 78 Kibaki votes to 780!)
By law, the Form 16s are open to public inspection. There have been suggestions of an "independent commission" to re-tally them, but you know how long that will take, and what will happen.
Why not make copies for the parties (PNU, ODM, ODM-K)? And the news agencies (KTN/Standard, NTV/Nation, Al Jazeera, BBC, CNN)? Why not scan all of them and put them on the net? Not just the Presidential forms, but the corresponding Parliamentary vote forms. So all 44,000+. Remember what I said above? The Presidential vote turnout at a polling station is identical to the Parliamentary turnout.
The people modifying the return forms for the Presidential forgot to make corresponding numerical changes to the Parliamentary forms.
Nailed.
Everyone in Kenya knows that Raila won. The violence will cease when the votes are counted and reported. Not by ECK, or an independent commission, but by all the news agencies, parties, people adding it up for themselves and arriving at the same results.
We all saw a man staggering, being beaten by the police for being out on the road outside Kibera. He turned his face to the camera, and said "from Kibera no food no water no electricity since 3 days" then turned away and staggered onwards. That was two days ago.
No water.