Free and fair

Washington Post
Editorial
August 9, 2010

There are two reasons to hail the adoption of Kenya's new constitution, which won about two-thirds of the vote in a national referendum last week. The first cause for celebration is that the vote itself, and the campaign preceding it, took place, for the most part, peacefully.

This was far from predictable in a country whose last presidential election, in 2007, devolved into horrific ethnic violence that claimed the lives of 1,300 people. But the major political parties that have been governing in coalition since the upheaval basically kept their promises to keep the voting free and fair.

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