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 In 1992 the amendment that had mainted a single party system was revoked, returning Kenya to multi-party elections.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: Kenyan Elections
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“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations ... all of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“In history as in human life, regret does not bring back a lost moment and a thousand years will not recover something lost in a single hour.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)