How Karua’s early congrats to Ngirici turned to ridicule
The Azimio La Umoja One Kenya Coalition running mate Martha Karua found herself is a murky situation on Thursday following the results of the Kirinyaga County gubernatorial outcome.
Ms Karua, who comes from Kirinyaga was supporting the Independent candidate Wangui Ngirici to unseat the incumbent governor Anne Waiguru.
Waiguru was running on the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) party of the Deputy President William Ruto.
But even before the electoral commission released its last tally, Ms Karua, through her official twitter account had congratulated Ngirici for the win, saying that it was of great importance.
“Congrats Wangui Ngirici. Your win is of great significance,” Ms Karua said.
Check out the tweet below.
Congrats @WanguiNgirici your win is of great significance #kenyaelections2022
— Martha Karua SC (@MarthaKarua) August 11, 2022
It appears that the Narc Kenya party leader had based her opinion on the results on Ngirici’s early lead from some stations.
But things changed within hours, and the outcome was different.
The final results was that the incumbent governor managed to secure her second term in office.
Waiguru managed to garner a total of 112,932 votes against her closest rival Ngirici who gained 104,980 votes.
Ms Karua became the victim of the propaganda that was being shared across the social media by the supporters of certain candidates.
The move is usually intended to cause fear and panic among the candidates.
Also, the congratulatory message from Ms Karua extended her rivalry with Waiguru.
Earlier on, Waiguru and Ngirici exchanged words on the social media after the governor alleged that there were plans to rig the outcome by bringing in extra ballot boxes which were to favour her opponent.
In the 2017 election, Ms Karua contested for the governor seat against Waiguru, who won under the Jubilee Party of President Uhuru Kenyatta, but changed the party ahead of the 2022 election.
On the other hand, Waiguru and Ngirici battle emerged last year when Ngirici, who is the outgoing Kirinyaga woman representative quit the UDA party when Waiguru ditched jubilee party and joined UDA.
According to Ngirici, her exit from UDA was based on what she termed as betrayal and she was not ready to face Waiguru in party primaries for the ticket.
The Kirinyaga race was among the mostly contested seats in the country, and was to depict the battle of the leading alliances in the country, Azimio and the Kenya Kwanza Alliance.