History was made yesterday night when Martin Wanyonyi took his place as the first Member of Parliament elect with albinism.
According to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, Wanyonyi was declared the winner of the Webuye East MP seat on a Ford Kenya party ticket.
Wanyonyi will succeed MP Alfred Sambu with 12, 864 votes out of the total 30,455 votes cast.
Addressing the media after the announcement, the MP-elect lauded electorates for trusting him despite his disability vowing to represent everybody in the parliament including persons with disabilities for the prosperity of the constituency.
“It is a historic moment in the country since a person with albinism has been elected through the vote as an MP,” he said.
Wanyonyi joined politics in 2013 as a nominated Member of the County Assembly on a New Ford Kenya ticket.
In 2017 he vied as an independent candidate and succeded as the Ndivisi member of the county assembly.
Meanwhile, Kenyans have been advised to be patient as the commission continues with counting and tallying election results from various regions.
Regarding concerns from the public over different figures of presidential results displayed by media houses, Media Council of Kenya CEO David Omwoyo confirmed that media houses have their own tallying centers to total the results from the commission’s platform, which brings the difference but the final result will be uniform.
Therefore, the kind of results displayed by each media house depends on the time taken to process IEBC data, manpower, and the commission’s randomness in uploading of the results in their portal.
It is for the first time in Kenya’s history that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) allowed media houses politicians and members of the public to track the election results from their portal.