Easy voting in Embakasi Central as incumbent eyes second term

Faith Mwikali is a voter at Kayole 1 Primary school.

She sits on one of the blocks at the entrance of the school minutes after casting her vote.

She is relieved because unlike in 2017, she took less than 10 minutes to vote.

“I can’t believe I took such a short time. This time round they (IEBC) are so organised,” she says.

Mwikali is among the voters in Nairobi’s Embakasi Central who turned up on Tuesday to exercise their democratic right of choosing their leaders.

The exercise, which kicked off at 6am, has been going on smoothly despite a few complaints from the voters over what they termed as confusion in tracing their names to tell in what stream to vote.

Unlike in 2017 when long queues were seen extending to the main road, the queues are shorter, thanks to the more than 30 streams that have been put in place to facilitate quicker voting.

“Mara hii IEBC wametufanya mambo,” lements a woman who is unable to read her name on the list pinned at the gate at Mwangaza Primary School.

The names are too tiny to be read.

Despite the hiccups, the voters were optimistic that their candidates would carry the day.

But, to them, peace is most important at the moment.

Among the candidates who turned out to vote was incumbent MP Benjamin Gathiru, popularly known as Mejjadonk.

Gathiru, who is vying for a second term on a UDA ticket, was hopeful that he would garner more votes this time than in 2017.

“For the last five years I have worked very well with Embakasi Central residents and I am very sure and confident that they will vote me in for the second term with more votes than they did in 2017,” Gathiru said.

“Being a cosmopolitan constituency we have tried our level best to serve people and changing the tribal narrative”.