How to Undermine a Democracy
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In the early hours of July 29, 10 days before Kenya’s presidential election, Chris Msando, a 44-year-old information technology manager at the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, got behind the wheel of his Land Rover in Nairobi’s central business district.
Msando, a plump, bespectacled father of four, had only been in his role since May. His predecessor at the IEBC, the body overseeing Kenya’s elections, had been placed on leave after he allegedly refused to cooperate in an audit of its technical systems. In his three months on the job, Msando had gained a reputation for competence, and integrity, in a position of critical importance. Earlier that evening, he’d appeared on national television to explain the workings of the commission’s high-tech answer to the suspicions that had long dogged election results in the country.
Msando, though, would never get a chance to make sure the system functioned as intended. After leaving the broadcast studio, he spent the rest of the evening at a downtown club with friends, before getting in his car with three unknown individuals shortly before 2:00 a.m. Footage from city CCTV cameras shows the vehicle circling erratically through the Kenyan capital, until it disappears on a highway traveling north an hour later. The IT manager’s body, along with that of a 21-year-old female companion, was found later that morning in a wooded area roughly ten miles from the city center. An autopsy revealed Msando was tortured and then killed by strangulation.
Msando’s death came as the country braced for a political re-match between the incumbent president, Uhuru Kenyatta, son of Kenya’s first president, and Raila Odinga, a former prime minister and longtime opposition leader of the country. Odinga had run for president three times before, including 2007, when he lost to Mwai Kibaki under heavily disputed circumstances, touching off a horrific wave of violence that still clouds the country’s politics. Odinga, who heads the National Super Alliance, or NASA, ran again in 2013, and lost, narrowly,
