The last pallets of ballot papers and other plastic crates loaded with electoral material were unloaded Monday in the 46,229 polling stations open Tuesday from 06:00 to 17:00 (03:00 to 14:00 GMT) during a ballot with high stakes for the economic engine of East Africa.
In total, the 22.1 million voters must vote six times on Tuesday to choose their president, but also their parliamentarians, governors and some 1,500 local elected officials.
These general elections mark the end of a long campaign, which began well before the official period, and marked by the soaring cost of living, against the backdrop of the pandemic and the effects of the war in Ukraine.
Of the four candidates running, two dominated: Raila Odinga, 77, running for the fifth time, and current vice-president William Ruto, 55. Two political veterans whose huge portraits line the roads and who are neck and neck for a ballot that promises to be tight.
Vice-president since the election of Uhuru Kenyatta in 2013, Ruto had been promised by the latter to be the candidate of the presidential Jubilee party in 2022. But the unexpected 2018 rapprochement between Kenyatta and Odinga made him a challenger, campaigning ever since.
In recent months, the electoral dispute has raged at cross-country meetings, from isolated towns to slums in this country where inequalities are glaring and the minimum wage is 15,120 shillings (124 euros). Disagreements have also spread online, accompanied by an endless stream of misinformation.
On Sunday, the favorites polished their posts. William Ruto wished during a religious service "that every Kenyan (...) be a messenger of peace". Raila Odinga pleaded for a "united country", assuring his fellow citizens that they were "first" Kenyans "before being a member of any other community".
In the Republic of Kenya and its 46 tribes, ethnicity is a key factor in voting booths.
- A "different" ballot -
The country is also marked by the 2017 electoral saga, which saw the Supreme Court invalidate the ballot due to irregularities, a first in Africa. Pending a second vote, the electoral episode had dragged on, shaken by opposition demonstrations which were harshly repressed by the police and which left several dozen dead.
Ten years earlier, the post-election crisis of 2007-2008 caused more than 1,100 deaths and hundreds of thousands of people displaced during ethnic clashes. A deep wound in the history of independent Kenya.
The fear of violence still hovers.
But "Kenyans hope that this year's vote will be different," said Monday in its editorial in the Daily Nation. This influential Kenyan daily believes that "elections should not be a matter of life or death".
In this context, calls for calm have multiplied. On Sunday, US Ambassador to Kenya Meg Whitman said Tuesday's poll was "an opportunity for Kenyans to show the world the strength of Kenyan democracy by holding free, fair and peaceful elections."
Hundreds of international and civil society observers will be deployed on Tuesday, notably by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (Igad). Mulatu Teshome, head of this East African regional organization, said on Sunday that "peaceful and credible elections, a peaceful transition, these are the aspirations of Africans".
All eyes are also on the electoral commission (IEBC), at the heart of past electoral disputes. It has trained hundreds of assessors, improved the identification and electronic transmission system and ensures that it is ready to take up the challenge of a blameless ballot.
