Kenyan Presidential Fix: Mwai Fiddles, Nairobi Burns

BBC online carries a good summary of the problems with the presidential ballot in Kenya. Although his party has but 33 MPs of c 200 the incumbent President Mwai has defied 50 or more polls and studies to emerge triumphant. Anomalies include a 115% turnout in one constituency and a 50% hike in votes for Mwai between local declaration and Nairobi coronation. BBC page HERE.

The melting away of the ballot rigging worries we reported on the eve of the vote to a comfortable win for Odinga "if the lead is maintained" was quite simply too good to be true.

The young Cheetah's have been gazumped by the old Cheaters. Old Swahili saying: When the elephants fight, it is the grass that gets crushed.

Comment is Free: Dr Rupa Huq Debuts on Grrrrl Power

Dr Rupa Huq has set some hares running with this Comment is Free piece on the position of women in politics in South Asia. Baroness Warsi seems to be lauded as an innovation though Baroness Pola Uddin was elevated virtually ten years ago in 1998.

Jemima Goldsmith: Bhutto, Kleptocrat in Hermes Scarf

Here is Jemima Goldsmith-Khan assessing Benazir Bhutto for Pakistan Uncut - originally in October 2007 on her return - with comments then and now.

Breaking News: Bilawal Bhutto Zardari to Head PPP

Although at 19 he is too young to stand for parliament in Pakistan, Bilawal Bhutto is to become double-barreled and also Chair of the PPP reports BBC Online

Mr 10%, 20% (and counting) Asif Ali Zardari will run the party day to day as a kind of regent while Makhdoom Amin Fahim, the existing Deputy Chair is likely to be the Prime ministerial candidate for the party.

In the BBC profile for Bilawal it is announced au contraire he is to become a single barreled Bhutto. He is to complete his studies at Oxford before taking day-to-day charge over from his dad.

Although repeatedly accused of corruption and having spent extended spells in prison Mr Zardari protests his innocence and has never been convicted.

Kenyan General Election: Odinga's Orange Revolution?

Events elsewhere in the world have overshadowed the relatively peaceful Orange Revolution that seems to be occuring in Kenya. The second link at the above post now shows Raila Amolo Odinga maintaining a lead over incumbent Mwai Kibaki with an alternative Orangeman Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka fading.

Most of the old stagers, or Hippos, have been flung out of parliament by their electorates. And if the lead is maintained Odinga will lead a parliament of young bloods, or Cheetahs.

Conservatives: Bogus and Negative Campaigning 2007

Strangely I tend to agree with Unity that this fixed-term "Campaign" from Iain Dale is opportunistical tosh. In case readers should think I'm obsessed I also agree with Tom Watson that the likes of this tragi-comic accident must be stamped out. And with Will Parbury that if you're an Eton old boy fed up with living at jet speed this bargain may just float your boat. Just needs a lick of paint.

Benazir Bhutto: Telegraph and Guardian Obituaries

The Telegraph and The Guardian obituaries. Probably learnt more from the former. Today's terrible events were surely Benazir's destiny?

Kenyan General Election: Mixed Messages from IED

Institute for Education in Democracy exit polls have the presidential status quo maintained while their provisional results put figures on their heads.

In the latter Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka leads Raila Amolo Odinga with both hammering incumbent Mwai Kibaki.

Kenyan General Election: Voting Starts in Four Hours

This NY Times article shines a little light on tomorrow's presidential and general election in Kenya. Looks clear as mud. LOL's resident Kenya psephologist tells me that bales of pre-marked voting slips have been distributed and in at least some cases intercepted, that usefully proportioned banknotes have been distributed rather than the traditional bottles of beer, and that it's all to play for.

As you'll see if you check the NYT the election rubric is complex so that the second or third in the popular vote could actually pick up the presidency ... I believe voting starts 3 am and ends 3pm our time. Is the future Orange?

Tory Party Funding: Off Shore Cartelier Bungs Questioned

Missed this Crick blog story about a ludicrously large donation from the scion of a long time Tory donor. This lad of 32 called Tom Scott gave half a mill to the Conservatives back in summer 2006. More than his own house is worth. And shortly after dad - also a Tom Scott - became an extremely impermissible donor.

He had personally been an impermissible donor for quite a while, living as he did in Guernsey. But when he sold a vestigial UK company (a car dealership in Bournemouth) which he had used for a £50,000 bung or two reported by the Times in April 2006 the cartelier and cars, supermarkets and casinos magnate sadly lost this presumably entirely legal conduit.

Mr Crick has more of his hissiest insinuations while the Independent belied its status as a viewspaper by actually carrying the news.

Hat tip for the Crick: Hopi Sen. Hats off to Kevan Jones MP who is asking some tough questions of the never vigilant Electoral Commission.

Church and State: Does the Blair Wear a Pointy Hat?

So, what a gas, Blair has converted to the One True Church. Hurrah! Risking being called as a nutter.

Ann Widdy, who was in the early 90s rush-to-Rome with child burgerer John Gummer when the C of E allowed women to become priestly, has questioned Blair's record on abortion votes.

But Widdy avoided a perfectly sensible question from BBC journalists. That was about civil partnerships. Annie put up something totally forgetable instead.

Urban Dictionary: What's the Meaning of Clegg?

A triumph for Clegg but not sure it'll stick. Hat tip: Recess Monkey.

BNP Unity: Richard Barnpot Becomes Balletomane

What a coincidence. As Miss Unity Mitford begins her stalking of Herr Adolf Hitler we learn from the Guardian that ballerina Ms Simone Clarke has forsaken her long term partner Yat-Sen Chang, the father of her daughter ... for Herr Richard Barnbrook.

The Guardian's excreable series of advertising features for the BNP get the credit:

"We were there to support her after the Guardian's investigation, so ironically the paper brought us together."

Said tricky Dicky, leader of the master race in Barking and Dagenham where there are a full complement of 12 disciples on the local council.

Unity Valkyrie Mitford, was born and named in the Canuck village of Swastika, performed an excruciatingly slow suicide, dying nine years after shooting herself in the head with the "harlot's gun" Hitler gave her as a life preserver.

Clarke I'd say needs Barmcake like a hole in the head:

"I'm not opposed to mixed marriages," said Barnpot back in January, "but their children are washing out the identity of this country's indigenous people". Now he says, with Simone's youngster to consider, that this objection was "educational" (sic). By which he may mean "academic".

And no Hitler was not the baby father, in fact there was no baby in that other tale, asserts a sprightly Jeffrey Archer (b May 1940) with a splendid click of the heels.

Phil Woolas has a Work Blog: Ellee Seymour Rips Into It

Ellee has discovered Phil Woolas's Bali blog. It is a ministerial number, making it semi-official rather than personal, and it is currently set to no comments. This last point causes outrage to Ellee who has been a defender of Nadine Dorries' personal prattle blog, set up as I recall with public money, and with a no comments policy introduced when the going got tough on Nad's bad science libel.

Cameron's Witney Conservatives: Blanket Coverage?

Hopi Sen has kindly re-worked a Tory statement on the Wendy Alexander donations to reflect the case of Dave Cameron who took four times as much from impermissible donors and having been caught out before the Labour story was broken by Tory researchers kept schtum in his two-faced condemnations of Alexander and others.

Maidstone and the Weald: Dale Over and Out

Let me be the first to offer condolences to Iain Dale at this sorry announcement.

Tory Health Charity Hijack: Ashcroft's Bearwood Barefaced

Red Rooster had an exclusive story yesterday afternoon about Tory PPC Caroline Noakes hijacking the logo and campaign of the Breast Cancer Care charity to front up a party political survey which has nothing to do with that charity. She says she will personally donate an unspecified sum to the charity for every survey returned. This morning Recess Monkey takes up the story with a list of some £26,000 of registered donations from dollar billionaire and sometime Belizean Lord Ashcroft's Bearwood Corporate Services Limited, and £9,500 from three other companies. £15,000 has also been donated by three named individuals. More than £50,000 of registered donations in two and a half years.

Nearer to home we have seen similar tactics. In 2005 John Leech MP stuck out a leaflet - alongside his Christie Hospital Cancer Hoax - about women's cancers. As I recall this too appeared to be endorsed by a number of charities.

In the infamous "Save Christie's Hospital" leaflet he posed grinning with various other Manchester Lib Dem councillors and stated that the Hospital needed to be saved from closure.

And these were even spread in hospital waiting rooms where chemo- and radio- therapy patients and their friends and relatives waited for treatment. Most of these patients and visitors were NOT members of the electorate in the constituency.

In the run up to the General Election that never was this autumn he stuck out a leaflet with a list of his various health activities, aimed at deflecting from his callous Christie campaign where his false claims clearly influenced some voters.

Recess has already run a follow up story stating that the Charity will not accept donations from the PPC and that as of the new year the promise of unspecified donations will itself become illegal. Nestled towards the foot of the Red Rooster story is this further claim:

In a previous campaign against John Denham, she (A-lister Caroline Nokes) sent out campaign literature with herself in 'provocative poses' to male voters.

We don't have a copy of such leaflets at the moment but the latest is top right (click to enlarge).

Tyrone Taylor: Tyrone Taylor Has Left the Building

Not a great video. A clumsy bootleg in fact. But sad to hear of the untimely death of Tyrone Taylor whose lovers rock standard Cottage in Negril became a huge hit in 1983 almost two years after it was cut. Hopefully a tape of the song from Sunsplash 1984 will become available and would be a much better tribute. A song written, voiced and produced by Taylor himself.

The Guardian obituary tells his story.

Lord Taylor of Warwick: Botox? Weave? Blokey?

Lord Taylor of Warwick reviewed the papers on News 24 last night. Extraordinary botoxy forehead, strange weave and and embarrassing blokey nudge nudge on Sarkozy's latest model.

Not sure he'll be asked again. But here is Lord ToW comparing grooming and double entendre notes with Lord Darth of Vader.

Tory Donor Sleaze: All Down to "Memory Man" Cameron

Ho Ho Ho. That sleazy donationed witty Tory MP Hopi Sen was on about was not BoJo as we wishfully thinked, but was his close Bullingdon chum ... yes, that's right ... David Cameron!

Labour MP John Mann wrote to the Electoral Commission to complain about the donations, and said:

"This is a shocking revelation. It beggars belief that David Cameron was lecturing others and questioning their integrity, when he has not even bothered to check that his own house is in order."