Kenya’s new government faces serious challenges

WHEN the final results of Kenya’s presidential election were announced on the evening of August 11th, many feared the worst. Hours previously the opposition, led by Raila Odinga, a perennial presidential candidate, had walked out of a meeting with the electoral commission. James Orengo, one of Mr Odinga’s closest allies, said that the announcement was a “charade” and that the commission was in cahoots with the government. “Kenyans always rise up,” he went on. As he spoke, an ominous silence descended on Nairobi, the capital, as people stayed inside.

Yet in the end, the uprising was relatively subdued. In Mr Odinga’s strongholds, in the slums of Nairobi and in Western Kenya, protesters blocked roads and burned tyres. The police responded with typical brutality, firing tear gas and live rounds into the crowds. After a few days, at least two dozen people were dead, including a nine-year-old girl who was hit by a stray bullet and a six-month-old baby who was clubbed on the head. But the violence did not spread beyond a few hotspots, nor did it produce bloodshed along ethnic lines, of the sort that left some 1,400 people dead after disputed elections in 2007.

As The Economist went to press, the post-election crisis was hardly resolved. At a press conference on August 16th, Mr Odinga repeated his assertion that the election was stolen from him, saying that Uhuru Kenyatta (pictured above) was re-elected by “computer-generated fraud”. Almost a quarter of the 41,000 forms that officially recorded the results had still not been released by the electoral commission, making it difficult to disprove Mr Odinga’s claims. Two NGOs that have been critical of the election process, and which were involved in a petition against the result, have been threatened with closure by the government.

But it seems more likely that Mr Odinga’s protests will fizzle out than that they will explode. He called for non-violent protests and said that he will contest the result at Kenya’s supreme court, rather than on the streets. Neither prospect will much trouble Mr Kenyatta. Unless Mr Odinga can provide definitive evidence of rigging, ambassadors of Western countries have made clear that he should give up.

The diminishing tension, however, is far from the end of Mr Kenyatta’s problems. A relatively peaceful election ought to be a boost. “We really expect Kenya to take off—there is huge pent-up demand,” says Adil Popat of Simba Corporation, a big conglomerate. But many wonder whether that is really true. Though GDP has grown quickly of late—by almost 6% last year—it has been fuelled by government borrowing ahead of the election. Last year the fiscal deficit was 9.6% of GDP. Declining exports risk weakening the currency, which would make it harder to service the government’s foreign loans (see chart). Some even wonder if the expansion was as big as the figures say. Kenya’s GDP was “suspiciously stable” in 2015 and 2016, says John Ashbourne of Capital Economics, a British consultancy.

And while political uncertainty about the election retreats, another sort might emerge. The biggest victor may not have been Mr Kenyatta, but his vice-president, William Ruto. Mr Ruto wants to maintain the ethnic alliance between Kikuyus, Mr Kenyatta’s tribe, and Kalenjins, his own group, when he runs for president in 2022. Yet many question whether Kikuyus will really back him. Since running for president in Kenya is an extravagantly expensive operation, usually funded by looting the state, a long succession battle could worsen corruption, one of Kenya’s biggest economic problems.

Perhaps the most powerful message from Mr Odinga’s ultimately failed campaign was the claim that Kenya’s affluence is not reaching the poor. Because of a prolonged drought, more than 2m Kenyans are at risk of starvation—for the rest, food prices are soaring. If the economy slows, a relatively calm election may mark just the start of Mr Kenyatta’s problems.