Daily News Brief

August 16, 2022

Top of the Agenda

After six days of tallying, Kenya’s electoral commission announced that Deputy President William Ruto won the country’s presidential election (NYT) with 50.49 percent of votes to challenger Raila Odinga’s 48.85 percent. Four electoral commissioners stormed out of the vote-counting center, and Odinga rejected the results before they were announced. Still, an election observer group composed of civil society and faith-based organizations said the official tally matched its own count (Al Jazeera). 

The leaders of Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda were among the African heads of state who congratulated Ruto (East African) on his victory. Odinga is expected to challenge the results in court. Only 65 percent of Kenyans turned out to vote in the election, a drop from 80 percent in the previous one.

Analysis

“The election hangs in the balance, scrutinized not just at home but across a continent where Kenya’s rambunctious democracy is among those that are viewed as indicators of progress,” the New York Times’ Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Abdi Latif Dahir, and Declan Walsh write. 

 
“Kenyans themselves are concerned that perhaps these elections are not consequential enough, in the sense that few seem to expect significant changes to their daily struggles and concerns regardless of who wins. It has been difficult to tease out the major differences in candidates’ visions for Kenya–for job creation, for addressing inequalities, for coping with the consequences of climate change, or shoring up the country’s stability in an increasingly volatile region,” CFR’s Michelle Gavin writes for the Africa in Transition blog. 

Pacific Rim

To secure electricity supplies amid a heat wave and low rainfall, authorities in Sichuan and other Chinese provinces ordered factories (Nikkei) to temporarily suspend production due to planned power outages.

Australia: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that his predecessor Scott Morrison secretly took control of five ministries (ABC) during his term. Albanese accused Morrison of undermining democratic checks and balances.

South and Central Asia

Noeleen Heyzer was appointed as the UN special envoy for Myanmar in the wake of the military coup last year. It is unclear whether Heyzer will meet with former de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi or the junta leaders during her visit (AP). 

For the Asia Unbound blog, CFR’s Joshua Kurlantzick discusses how Myanmar’s military is losing ground to rebels and ethnic armies.

China/India/Sri Lanka: A Chinese survey ship docked in Sri Lanka (Nikkei) after India protested its potential visit over security concerns. Hours earlier, India gave Sri Lanka a surveillance aircraft.

Middle East and North Africa

An advisor to the team negotiating Iran’s return to the nuclear deal said on Twitter that the remaining issues in the draft are “not very difficult to resolve” (CNN). The European Union said it is consulting with the United States and other parties to the nuclear deal on how to move the proposed draft forward (Bloomberg).

Syria: Turkish troops and U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters clashed (Reuters) in the northern Syrian town of Kobani, which had seen relatively little fighting since Kurdish fighters expelled the self-declared Islamic State from the area in 2015. 

Sub-Saharan Africa

France spent billions of dollars on the nine-year mission against Islamist insurgents. The final troops to withdraw moved into neighboring Niger (NYT).

For Foreign Affairs, Stephen Smith writes that France’s mess in the Sahel has given Russia new sway in Africa.

Europe

The explosions at an arms depot in Russia-occupied Crimea came a week after an apparent Ukrainian attack (BBC) on a Russian military base there. Russian officials referred to the latest explosions as “sabotage.”

Germany: A group of German air force jets departed on a test flight (AP) to the Indo-Pacific. The country’s defense minister said the flight emphasizes that Europe has not forgotten Asia amid the war in Ukraine.

Americas

Grenada’s Simon Stiell is the third consecutive UN climate chief from the Americas. A former climate chief said Stiell’s posting underscores the role of vulnerable island nations (The Guardian) in galvanizing global climate action. 

This timeline looks at the history of UN climate negotiations.

Colombia: Recently inaugurated President Gustavo Petro ordered fifty-two generals to retire (MercoPress), citing anticorruption measures.

United States

Rudy Giuliani, once a lawyer of President Donald Trump, was named as a target (NYT) of a Georgia probe into election interference, Giuliani’s lawyer said.

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