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Presidential election | |||||||||||||||||||||
Turnout | 57.18% | ||||||||||||||||||||
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General elections were held in Kenya on 27 December 2002. [1] Voters elected the president, members of the National Assembly and local officials.
Mwai Kibaki of the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) was elected, defeating Uhuru Kenyatta of the Kenya African National Union (KANU) and Simeon Nyachae of FORD–People.
Incumbent president Daniel arap Moi was ineligible to pursue a third term due to the two-term limit in the Constitution of Kenya. This was the first truly free general election held in Kenya since independence in 1964; a number of by-elections were held in 1966 before the onset of de facto one-party rule in 1969. The general election saw the end of the long-standing dominance of the KANU, which had governed the country since independence in 1963, including 23 years as the only legal party. The National Rainbow Coalition won a majority in the National Assembly.
Incumbent president Moi was constitutionally barred from running in the 2002 presidential elections. Some of his supporters floated the idea of amending the constitution to allow him to run for a third term, but Moi preferred to retire, choosing Uhuru Kenyatta, the son of Kenya's first President, as his successor. [2] In protest of Moi's decision a group of disappointed KANU presidential aspirants quit KANU and formed the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
In preparation for the 2002 elections, Kibaki's Democratic Party affiliated with several other opposition parties, including the LDP and National Alliance Party of Kenya (NAK) to form the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC). On 14 October 2002, at a large opposition rally in Uhuru Park in Nairobi, Kibaki was nominated as the NARC candidate after Raila Odinga declared Kibaki Tosha! (Kibaki is the one!). [3]
Candidate | Party | Votes | % | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Mwai Kibaki | National Rainbow Coalition | 3,646,277 | 62.20 | |
Uhuru Kenyatta | Kenya African National Union | 1,835,890 | 31.32 | |
Simeon Nyachae | FORD–People | 345,152 | 5.89 | |
James Orengo | Social Democratic Party | 24,524 | 0.42 | |
David Ng'ethe | Chama Cha Uma | 10,061 | 0.17 | |
Total | 5,861,904 | 100.00 | ||
Valid votes | 5,861,904 | 98.09 | ||
Invalid/blank votes | 114,006 | 1.91 | ||
Total votes | 5,975,910 | 100.00 | ||
Registered voters/turnout | 10,451,150 | 57.18 | ||
Source: IFES |
Party or alliance | Votes | % | Seats | +/– | |||
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National Rainbow Coalition | Liberal Democratic Party | 59 | New | ||||
Democratic Party | 39 | 0 | |||||
FORD–Kenya | 21 | +4 | |||||
National Party of Kenya | 6 | New | |||||
Total | 125 | +10 | |||||
Kenya African National Union | 64 | –43 | |||||
FORD–People | 14 | 11 | |||||
FORD–Asili | 2 | 1 | |||||
Safina | 2 | –3 | |||||
Sisi Kwa Sisi | 2 | New | |||||
Shirikisho Party of Kenya | 1 | 0 | |||||
Other parties | 0 | – | |||||
Appointed members | 12 | 0 | |||||
Total | 222 | 0 | |||||
Registered voters/turnout | 10,451,150 | – | |||||
Source: African Elections Database |
Of the 12 appointed seats, seven were members of the National Rainbow Coalition, four were members of KANU and one was a member of FORD–People. [4]
The politics of Kenya take place in a framework of a presidential republic, whereby the president is both head of state and head of government, and of a multi-party system in accordance with a new constitution passed in 2010.
The Kenya African National Union (KANU) is a Kenyan political party that ruled for nearly 40 years after Kenya's independence from British colonial rule in 1963 until its electoral loss in 2002. It was known as Kenya African Union (KAU) from 1944 but due to pressure from the colonial government, KAU changed its name to Kenya African Study Union (KASU) mainly because all political parties were banned in 1939 following the start of the Second World War. In 1946 KASU rebranded itself into KAU following the resignation of Harry Thuku as president due to internal differences between the moderates who wanted peaceful negotiations and the militants who wanted to use force, the latter forming the Aanake a forty, which later became the Mau Mau. His post was then occupied by James Gichuru, who stepped down for Jomo Kenyatta in 1947 as president of KAU. The KAU was banned by the colonial government from 1952 to 1960. It was re-established by James Gichuru in 1960 and renamed KANU on 14 May 1960 after a merger with Tom Mboya's Kenya Independence Movement.
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