Kenya: Ethnicity to Determine Voting Patterns

Stephanie Branson
SOC 202 10/26/07


Kenya: Poll - Ethnicity to Determine Voting Patterns
http://allafrica.com/stories/200710151989.html


The article that I read discusses how the general election in Kenya has shown a voting pattern in which ethnicity is the determining factor. They conducted a poll which was done by the International Republican Institute (IRI) which showed that 38.4 percent of the eligible voters were thinking about regional affiliation while voting. One of the biggest factors which the IRI resident director found was that tribalism was the basis of how a lot of the people were deciding to vote. Some of the other factors included personality, issues addressed by candidates, party affiliation, wealth of a candidate, need for change, experience, and gender. All of the different aspects fell considerably below when comparing them to regional affiliation. In the article it said that a lot of this may have been started due to the fact that a few weeks ago the government ran an advertisement in the newspapers which gave the names of the persons appointed to head public offices and their areas of origin. It has even gone as far as International observers monitoring the General Election have warned that tribalism in Kenya is at its worst and is at a serious point that it could tear the country apart. Their main focus now is on trying to make people vote on who would do the best job and not to base it on ethnicity.
This is another article in which I have read that shows how the government is having issues with politics and religion and or ethnicity. People are basing their votes not on who will do the best job but yet who is similar to their ethnicity. I can kind of understand were the people are coming from. Maybe they are thinking if the person is similar in ethnicity then maybe they will have some of the same views. Maybe they would just like to see a similar face in office. Whatever the answer maybe, the real concern should be who is going to do the best job no matter what ethnicity they may be because this person is going to have major responsibilities.