Kenya’s largest newspaper, Daily Nation [1], has launched a new online platform [2] that focuses coverage of the 2007 general elections. The interactive platform is a work in process that will include top stories, blog posts, and multimedia content.
Citizen contribution is invited in the form of comments and anyone who has any interesting picture taken of a political event is also invited to send it in.
The blogs are mostly by the Nation senior editors and one of the current top ones is by the Managing Editor in charge of media convergence and new products, Chares Onyango Obbo, [3]who, in one blog post, hails the demise of KANU – the former ruling party [4]. He notes that:
Kanu has all but become a shell that cannot field a presidential within just one electoral cycle of losing power. And without a presidential candidate, which would have allowed the party to build a national machine and craft a centralised election strategy, it will be a miracle if it can field even half the number of Parliamentary candidates it did in 2002…there is also something of Shakespearean retribution in (former President) Moi who led Kenya through its worst period, suffering the humiliation of burying Kanu half-alive by giving up on it as a viable enough organisation to field, let alone win, a presidential candidate.
Kenya’ second largest circulating newspaper, The Standard [5], also has an election section [6] that is, for now, bereft of interactive features.
Kenyan presidential and parliamentary elections are slated for December 2007.