Hello! Hope you had a great week. This week, we’re looking at the tight election race in Kenya, the ceasefire in Gaza, a Chinese tracking ship heading towards Sri Lanka and updates from the fourth Taiwan Strait crisis.
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Now, let’s get started.
This day that year
1992: Canada, Mexico and the United States completed negotiations for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that created a trilateral trade bloc in North America. It was replaced by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) in 2020.
1976: Around 2,000 Palestinians refugees were killed (numbers disputed) in a massacre at Tel al-Zaatar — a United Nations-administered refugee camp near Beirut, Lebanon. It was one of the bloodiest events of the Lebanese Civil War.
Kenyan elections
Deputy President William Ruto and Leader of Opposition Raila Odinga were locked in a tight contest to become Kenya’s next president. Voting was held on August 9 along with polls to elect members of parliament, county governors as well as members of the 47 county assemblies. At the time of writing this edition, about 99 percent of the votes had reportedly been counted and Ruto was believed to be leading with a narrow margin. But there’s a catch.
The Kenyan election commission is not officially issuing a running tally of the results and the local news media has had to manually compile them using images of counting forms being uploaded to the commission’s website. As a result, there were variations in leads and the margin. In fact, some were reporting that Odinga, also the former prime minister, was leading. Similarly, much of the parliamentary election results also remained undeclared.
Election officials are required to compare results they receives from about 46,000 polling stations through photographs with the actual result sheets being delivered in-person to the main tallying centre in capital Nairobi. This system is to ensure there’s no election fraud. But this is also delaying the declaration of the results. The commission is expected to officially announce the result in the coming days and the winner of this election will remain unclear until then.
But this wait has led to unfounded claims about the results spreading on social media. There have been claims of politicians winning and losing seats even though the tally emerging from their constituencies was far from being conclusive. Platforms like Twitter have reportedly labelled some of these posts urging users to wait for the official results to be declared.
Meanwhile, two other candidates David Waihiga and George Wajackoyah were on track to secure less than half a percent of votes each, and outgoing President Uhuru Kenyatta was not eligible to get a third term.
A candidate must receive more than 50 percent of the votes and a minimum of 25 percent of the votes in at least 24 of the 47 counties. If this is not achieved, a second round of polling is held between the top two candidates — where the one with the most votes wins.
Kenya is one of the most stable nations in eastern Africa, but elections there are closely watched because it has a history of poll-related violence. Post-poll violence in 2017 had led to the death of at least 50 people. Initial results had then shown that Kenyatta, seeking a second term, was winning with 54 percent of the votes. But Odinga had rejected and challenged the result in the Supreme Court. The top court subsequently annulled the result and ordered fresh presidential elections to be held within 60 days. Kenyatta picked up 98 percent of the votes in the repeat election (but with less than 40 percent turnout).
Kenya is home to about 56 million people and is an economic hub of the region. The main issues in this election were unemployment, corruption, the country’s post-pandemic economic challenges and rising prices of essential goods. The voter turnout this time, however, was about 65 percent – significantly lower than the 90 percent seen in 2017. This is possibly because a lot of young Kenyans stayed home and opted not to vote. Samira Sawlani, a journalist covering politics and society in East Africa, has written more about that in The New York Times.
What else?
Gaza ceasefire holds
A ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip appeared to be holding for over four days. The truce, brokered by neighbouring Egypt, came after a 66-hour ‘Operation Breaking Dawn’ Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched against the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) group in Gaza earlier this week. PIJ is designated a terrorist organisation by Israel, among other nations, and is not to be confused with Hamas that controls Gaza.
Israel launched a series of airstrikes against PIJ infrastructure and carried out targeted killings of some of the group’s military leaders in the blockaded Gaza Strip last week. Some Gazans claim that the Israeli military targetted civilian structures too. Dozens of people allegedly linked to the PIJ were also arrested by Israeli forces from the West Bank. The militant group also responded with retaliatory rocket fire against Israel. At least 48 Palestinians including 17 children were killed amid this fighting, according to the Gaza’s health ministry.
Some commentators have sought to highlight the timing of Israel’s actions in Gaza. Israel is heading for its fifth general election in four years and, according to commentators, the country’s interim Prime Minister Yair Lapid is hoping to gain voters’ support by projecting himself as being tough on security matters.
Update: Taiwan accuses China of simulating invasion
Taiwan has accused the Chinese military of simulating an attack on its main island, during the armed exercises it held over the weekend as a response to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei last week. Taiwan responded by holding live-fire drills of its own this week.
While China appeared to have ended this latest round of exercises around Taiwan, it has hinted that drills could now be held across the Taiwan Strait on a regular basis.
Meanwhile, war game simulations conducted by US-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies has pointed to no clear winners in a real-life Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Read more on that here.
Chinese tracking ship heads to Sri Lanka
Chinese navy ship Yuan Wang 5 has reportedly slowed down but is still believed to be on its way to Hambantota, Sri Lanka. This is despite Colombo asking Beijing to postpone the tracking ship’s docking for “replenishment” at the port of Hambantota. Sri Lanka’s request to China had come following Indian pressure. New Delhi has raised security concerns over the docking as the ship — capable of tracking inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) beyond Chinese base station controls — may be used to intercept and snoop on Indian defence forces’ signal intelligence.
One ship’s docking may or may not make a big difference, but India and its defence partners are concerned that China would increasingly start using the Hambantota port, which it has leased from Sri Lanka over Colombo’s non-payment of debt, as a naval base. However, so far, there is no evidence that Beijing is moving to do that.
Interesting stuff
“The Kremlin’s dependence on China will turn Russia into a useful instrument in a larger game for Zhongnanhai, a tremendous asset in Beijing’s competition with Washington.” Alexander Gabuev, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes in Foreign Affairs about how the war in Ukraine has turned Russia into China's “junior partner”. Read the full piece here.
“[Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart] Tokayev’s readiness to publicly stand up to Moscow has only reinforced his position in Kazakh society. People are beginning to see him as an independent politician who is no longer reliant on his predecessor Nursultan Nazarbayev, or on [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.” Temur Umarov, Fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is asking if Russian-ally Kazakhstan is next in the Kremlin’s sights after Ukraine. Read the full piece here.
“Climate change threatens the strategic interests and security of nation states by its potential to exacerbate existing social, environmental and economic issues and ultimately contribute to conflict.” Anum Farhan, Armida van Rij and Signe Kossmann write for Chatham House about the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation must prioritise climate change as a security issue. Read the article here.
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