After Kenya’s Vote for Reform, the Hard Work of Implementation

After Kenya’s Vote for Reform, the Hard Work of Implementation

In voting overwhelmingly to support a new constitution, Kenyans sent a clear message on Aug. 4 about the need for reform in a country brought nearly to its knees by corruption and bad governance.

And in going to the polls peacefully and en masse, capping a campaign season that included a bomb attack in the early days and persistent rumors of preparations for rancor around the country, the more than 70 percent of eligible voters who cast their ballots spoke volumes about the need to obviate the memory of previous elections: the last of which left more than 1,000 dead and tumbled east Africa's largest economy into crisis.

According to final tabulations released Aug. 7, nearly 67 percent of the voters who lined up at tightly secured polling stations around the country on Wednesday approved Kenya's first new constitution in the post-independence era, packed with a sheaf of reforms for everything from land tenure to governance.

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