Kenya’s Election Re-Do: On Wednesday, Kenya’s electoral commission said that it would go ahead with a repeat of the August presidential election, even though one of the main candidates, opposition leader Raila Odinga, has said he is withdrawing from the race because he does not believe the new poll will be free and fair. The new vote, scheduled for October 26, will be open to all eight candidates who ran in the initial election. But with the Odinga’s withdrawal, incumbent president Uhuru Kenyatta is likely to win easily against the other candidates, none of whom performed well in the earlier election.
The new election was ordered by the Supreme Court last month after it nullified the August election. In its ruling, the court found that senior poll officials had not followed electoral procedures properly to ensure a credible vote. It was the first time in an African election that a court cancelled the election of an incumbent president.
For weeks since the court ruling, Odinga has demanded that senior poll officials be replaced and prosecuted. He has also called for the replacement of the companies in charge of printing ballot papers and providing the devices needed for the electronic transmission of results–all areas that the court found to have been flawed in the August poll.
President Trump Expected To Decertify The Iran Deal: In a telephone call Tuesday Great Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May tried her best to convince President Trump that the Iran deal, the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) put together by former president Obama, was working. Under the deal Iran agreed to freeze its nuclear program for 15 years in exchange for lifting most Western economic sanctions. Britain and the United States are two of eight signatories, along with Iran, China, France, Russia, Germany and the European Union.
Trump has criticized the pact as an “embarrassment” and “the worst deal ever negotiated,” and he has signaled he will probably decertify Iran’s compliance by October 15. In Europe, however, the agreement is viewed as a rare triumph of international diplomacy in the Middle East, and countries are scrambling to put together a package of measures they hope will keep the deal on track if Trump pulls the US out. Sadly, without strong US support, senior officials in Berlin, Paris and London say it may only be a matter of time before the pact unravels, with grave consequences for Middle East security, nonproliferation efforts and transatlantic ties.
If the president goes through with undermining the Iran deal, US congressional leaders would have 60 days to decide whether to re-impose sanctions on Tehran. Trump also wants to designate Iran’s most powerful security force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), as a terrorist organization. The IRGC has a vast economic empire in Iran, and blacklisting it could make it more difficult for Iranian businesses to access the global financial system. US sanctions on the IRGC could affect conflicts in Iraq and Syria, where Tehran and Washington both support warring parties that oppose the Islamic State militant group ISIS.
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