Mbarire set to break 30-year election jinx

Runyenjes parliamentary aspirant Cecily Mbarire might have broken the 30-year old jinx that has seen Runyejes voters change their MPs at every election.

According to provisional results, Mbarire may succeed in retaining her seat which she was defending on a TNA ticket. By the time of we went to press, all the results were yet to tallied as the web-based tallying system failed to work.

However, provisional results given by the TNA Runyenjes party chairman show that Mbarire is leading her closest rival, Alliance Party of Kenya's Eric Muchangi, with 29,512 votes against the latter's 19,706 votes. These results are yet to be confirmed by the IEBC.

If the party's tallies are correct, Mbarire will be the first Runyenjes MP to be voted back after her father, Njagih Mbarire who was the only one to serve for two terms, 1974 to 1983.

During her campaigns, Cecily Mbarire had pleaded with the electorate to vote for her saying the practise of getting new leaders every five years had been detrimental to the development of the constituency.

Provisional results announced at 4pm indicated that APK's governor candidate Kithinji Kiragu was leading TNA's candidate Martin Wambora.

Outgoing Siakago MP and APK's candidate for the senator seat, Lenny Kivuti was ahead of TNA's candidate, Njeru Ndwiga. There was a likelihood of TNA capturing all four parliamentary offices in Embu although this was a close race with candidates from APK.

In Manyatta John Muchiri (TNA) was leading the race against outgoing MP Kathuri while in Gachoka, now renamed Mbeere South, outgoing MP TNA's Mutava Musyimi was likely to recapture his seat against APK's Geoffrey King'ang'i.

In what was formerly Siakago, now renamed Mbeere North, former area MP and TNA's Justin Muturi was ahead of APK’s Njeru Njagagua.

Tallying of the votes was delayed as the transmission of results malfunctioned. The IEBC officials had to resort to manual tallying of the results.

The county returning officer David Kiambi said he was still waiting for results from the constituency tally centers to arrive so that he could announce the final results.