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Autre Publication Scientifique Année : 2008

The 11th June 2008 By-Elections in Kenya A Rejoinder

Résumé

This paper is a reaction to Anne Cussac’s article: ‘The 11 June 2008 By-Elections’ which appeared in Mambo Vol. VII n° 7; 2008. Cussac set out to measure the popularity of PNU and ODM after the post-election conflicts caused by the discredited 27 December, 2007 elections. She uses the June 2008 by-elections to measure the popularity of the two parties not only because they occurred shortly after the political violence, but also because they were the first to be held after the formation of the grand coalition government between PNU and ODM. Focusing on the parliamentary byelection results, the stakes involved in the by-elections, voter turnout, and the role of ethnicity, Cussac concludes that ODM did not win more seats than PNU. However, she falls short of stating what her findings imply for the popularity of the parties, which apparently was her key goal. This article sets the analysis in its right context and questions some of the assumptions underlying Cussac’s paper. A Rejoinder The Context of the By-Elections It is true that the by-elections were held against a background of teething problems in the infant and fragile grand coalition government. It is however, not accurate to argue, as Cussac did, that the decision by ODM and PNU to field candidates in the by-elections is in itself a manifestation of mutual mistrust in the coalition. It should be appreciated that the two parties formed the coalition not because of some shared ideology, but because circumstances forced them to do so. The parties did not dissolve but rather, retained their distinctiveness with a right to field candidates in elections. Coalition governments are generally noisy and fractious—countries where they are regularly formed such as Israel and Germany, know this only too well. Cussac also argues that most of the parliamentary seats at stake had been won by ODM in the December 2007 polls and hence the pressure was on ODM to recapture the lost seats. It is true that ODM won Ainamoi, Emuhaya, and Embakasi in 2007, but it is T his paper is a reaction to Anne Cussac's article: 'The 11 June 2008 By-Elections' which appeared in Mambo Vol. VII n° 7; 2008. Cussac set out to measure the popularity of PNU and ODM after the post-election conflicts caused by the discredited 27 December, 2007 elections. She uses the June 2008 by-elections to measure the popularity of the two parties not only because they occurred shortly after the political violence, but also because they were the first to be held after the formation of the grand coalition government between PNU and ODM. Focusing on the parliamentary by-election results, the stakes involved in the by-elections, voter turnout, and the role of ethnicity, Cussac concludes that ODM did not win more seats than PNU. However, she falls short of stating what her findings imply for the popularity of the parties, which apparently was her key goal. This article sets the analysis in its right context and questions some of the assumptions underlying Cussac's paper. important to understand the circumstances under which they won those seats. Although Mugabe Were of ODM won Embakasi in the 2007 elections, he did so (with a mere 33% of votes cast), because PNU split its votes between Ferdinand Waititu (26%) and John Ndirangu (22%). Given the demographic and geo-political structure of Embakasi and its traditional voting patterns since 1992, Embakasi should have been easily won by PNU. In the by-election, Waititu and Ndirangu joined hands and were supported by ODM-K, whose candidate in the 2007 polls scored 9%. Assuming that there was no shift in voting trends, the PNU candidate should have scored roughly 57% of the votes cast in the by-elections, which is not significantly different from the 56% which Waititu (PNU) received in the by-election. Accordingly, PNU's support remained fairly stable. The ODM candidate, Esther Passaris, only received the support of Sumra Irshadali (CCU) who got 3% in 2007. She therefore should have scored about 36%. However, Passaris scored 42%. Furthermore, in the 2007 poll,

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Dates et versions

halshs-01211488 , version 1 (05-10-2015)

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  • HAL Id : halshs-01211488 , version 1

Citer

Patrick Asingo. The 11th June 2008 By-Elections in Kenya A Rejoinder. 2008. ⟨halshs-01211488⟩

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