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 In 1992 the amendment that had mainted a single party system was revoked, returning Kenya to multi-party elections.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:
“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)
“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)