Kenya Feature: Kenyatta Wins Presidential Election But May Face Court Challenge (France 24 and Al Jazeera English)

See also Kenya Feature: A Beginner's Guide to The Elections

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Uhuru Kenyatta, Kenya's deputy prime minister, has won the country's presidential election with 50.07 percent of the vote, official results show, just enough to avoid a runoff.

The country's electoral commission said voter turnout in the election was 88 percent.

Following the announcement on Saturday, Raila Odinga, outgoing Prime Minister, who came second in the election, said he would contest the result.

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Kenya Feature: A Beginner's Guide to Today's Elections

President Obama appeals to Kenyans to reject the intimidation of violence and host free, fair and peaceful elections

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Today's elections in Kenya are seen by many as a key to the stability of East and Central Africa, amid neighbours such as Somalia, the recently-divided Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

At the same time, there is the legacy of past election violence and the complication that a leading presidential candidate has been charged with war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

So what is happening today?

The elections are for a new President, MPs, and local representatives. They are the first under the new Constitution, passed in 2010.

What is the background?

In 2007, Kenya was the model of stability and opportunity within an otherwise chaotic region, or so it seemed.

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President Obama's Wars: The US Steps Up Its Proxy Fight in Somalia

Civilians Flee Fighting in Northern Somalia (Photo: Abdi Warsameh, AP)The Obama administration is intensifying its campaign against an al-Qaeda affiliate in Somalia by boosting the number of proxy forces in the war-torn country, expanding drone operations and strengthening military partnerships throughout the region.

In many ways, the American role in the long-running conflict in Somalia is shaping up as the opposite of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: relatively inexpensive, with limited or hidden U.S. footprints.

While the White House has embraced the strategy as a model for dealing with failed states or places inherently hostile to an American presence, the indirect approach carries risks. Chief among them is a lack of control over the proxy forces from Uganda, Burundi and Somalia, as well as other regional partners that Washington has courted and financed in recent years.

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US Politics: Republican Leader Gingrich on Obama's "Kenyan, Anti-Colonial" Behaviour

Citing a recent Forbes article by Dinesh D’Souza, former House speaker Newt Gingrich tells National Review Online that President Obama may follow a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview.

Gingrich says that D’Souza has made a “stunning insight” into Obama’s behavior — the “most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama".

“What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?” Gingrich asks. “That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.”

“This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president,” Gingrich tells us.

“I think he worked very hard at being a person who is normal, reasonable, moderate, bipartisan, transparent, accommodating — none of which was true,” Gingrich continues. “In the Alinksy tradition, he was being the person he needed to be in order to achieve the position he needed to achieve . . . He was authentically dishonest.”

“[Obama] is in the great tradition of Edison, Ford, the Wright Brothers, Bill Gates — he saw his opportunity and he took it,” Gingrich says.

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