History
After negotiation with the British since 1957, the British allowed "one person, one vote" elections in 1963. The first elections went smootly, electing Jomo Kenyatta as the first president of Kenya in 1964. However, under his leadership, competitive elections slowly disappeared as various political parties either joined or were suppressed by the Kenya African National Union (KANU). This consolidated single-party system would last even after Kenyatta died in 1978, eventually reaffirmed in an amendment to the constitution in 1982 which made Kenya a one party system.
After major political demonstrations in 1990, KANU bowed to public pressure and began reviewing the electoral system. In 1992 the amendment that had mainted a single party system was revoked, returning Kenya to multi-party elections. The constitutional shift did not immediately manifest itself in well run multiparty elections. However, by 2002 the international community thought the electoral system generally free, as KANU peacably transferred power to the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC).
Violence has been known to trouble elections, most recently in the December 2007 presidential elections, where an estimated 1000 people were killed and 600,000 displaced.
Read more about this topic: Elections In Kenya
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“As History stands, it is a sort of Chinese Play, without end and without lesson.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.”
—Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929)
“Every member of the family of the future will be a producer of some kind and in some degree. The only one who will have the right of exemption will be the mother ...”
—Ruth C. D. Havens, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)