NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 6 – The final referendum results show that 66.9 percent of those who voted in Wednesday’s poll approved the proposed Constitution while 30.6 opposed it.
According to the final figures released by the Interim Independent Electoral Commission Chairman Issack Hassan on Friday, 9,106,285 votes were cast in the exercise, out of which 218,633 votes (3.5pc) got spoilt. A total of 12.4 million Kenyans had registered as voters.
“The votes cast for Yes in the 210 constituencies is 6,092,593 while those for No is 2,795,059 votes,” announced Mr Hassan.
The IIEC declared that the Constitution had been approved on Thursday evening pending results from Turkana South, Narok South and Sirisia but said their outcome would not alter the final tally.
“We experienced a 72.1 percent voter turnout. These results are going to be gazzeted soon after which the President will announce the date of promulgation,” said Mr Hassan.
President Mwai Kibaki is required to promulgate the new law within the next 14 days failure to which, it automatically becomes law.
Both camps welcomed the provisional results with President Mwai Kibaki calling for unity ad commitment to implement the new law while the No camp accepted defeat but called for negotiations to deal with their contentions.
Mr Hassan urged the media and politicians to stop classifying the county according to the way the various regions voted. He called for the stop to the use of the referendum colours, red and green for segregation purposes.
“There is no green part of Kenya and there is no red part of Kenya. These two colours are part of the Kenyan flag,” he said.
“We as a country need to move on from this and we should not be seen as either red or green since this is going to divide this county more.”
After promulgation, a new Parliamentary Select Committee to be known as the Constitutional Implementation Oversight Committee, and the Implementation Commission will be formed to oversee the realisation of the new law.
The next one year will be filled with flurry of appointments as major commissions are constituted as well as the appointment of new top civil servants.
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