[Aljazeera] "Accept and move on" is a phrase that rears its head every time Kenya has elections. It is an ugly, dismissive phrase that tells people that regardless of the problems they may have with the officially declared outcome of an election, they should just suck it up and carry on. For a country that has always been deathly afraid of elections and the chaos and violence they bring, the legitimacy of polls has always played second fiddle to the impetus to maintain the peace and not rock the boat too much.Today, I’m hearing something disturbingly similar coming from the US media in its insistence that the conduct of the election must not be queried. Those who raise issue with the conduct of the poll, even when they are politicians who opted to certify the result, are easily accused of fanning the "Big Lie" about electoral fraud that led to violence. It is all too reminiscent of how Kenyan media shut down dissent in the aftermath of the last two elections.
Of course, there are crucial differences. Where in Kenya, it was the opposition claiming fraud by the government in favour of one candidate, in the US it was the incumbent president making claims that were refuted even by his own officials. His claims of rigging have been thrown out of dozens of courts, undermining their credibility, while in Kenya’s case, only the Supreme Court has jurisdiction to hear a dispute over the presidential election.
Yet two similarities stand out: the fact that millions of people believe the election was stolen, and that this presents an escalating probability of violence. This is not how election systems are supposed to work. The goal should be to deliver not just truth, that is they should be free and fair, but also legitimacy, that is they should leave people, especially those on the losing side, convinced that they were free and fair. When a significant portion of the electorate is convinced elections have been stolen, however kooky one may think that belief is, then to that extent, the system has failed and there should be a serious effort undertaken to address the failure.