Counting is still going on following Monday’s general election in Kenya. Following the close of polls the electronic tallying system for the presidential election crashed, forcing the IEBC to resort to a manual tallying system.

Just under half of the 290 constituencies have so far reported. Mr. Kenyatta still holds the lead, by about 350,000. The projected national turnout stands at 82%.

The IEBC has promised to release the final results tomorrow (Friday).

A couple inexplicable things have happened since my last post.

Firstly, the 300,000+ “rejected votes” that consistently made up 6% of votes in the initial tally have dwindled down to 40,000 – less than 1% of the total votes counted so far.

The IEBC’s explanation was that there was a software malfunction in the electronic tallying that increased the rejected votes by a factor of eight.

Secondly, both CORD and Jubilee coalitions have issued statements regarding the tallying process. CORD claimed that some results were “doctored.” Jubilee claimed that the UK government had sent troops to Kenya and that the high commissioner was trying to influence the tallying process.

None of these claims have been substantiated. Kenyan media houses have agreed to deny live coverage to such political pronouncements.

Life is slowly getting back to normal – I was glad to see traffic on Nairobi roads today!

With regard to the final result, it is clear that Mr. Uhuru Kenyatta has an unassailable lead over Mr. Raila Odinga. What is not clear is whether or not he will win by a wide enough margin to avoid a runoff.

The wait continues…