By Ty McCormick

Donald Trump says he may not accept the results of Tuesday’s vote. Kenyans know what that looks like – and it’s not pretty.

NAIROBI — A firebrand populist positions himself as the savior of a marginalized segment of the electorate. He whips his supporters into a frenzy, implying that a loss at the polls would mean the destruction of democracy itself. Then he rejects the outcome of the election as rigged and acts surprised when some of his supporters resort to violence.

Could the story of Kenya’s disputed 2007 vote, which ignited a bloody melee that left more than 1,000 people dead, be a harbinger of America’s future on Election Day? The parallels are clear enough to have inspired a trending hashtag: #RailaAnotherTrump is a jab at Raila Odinga, who ran for president in 2007 and is still the leader of the political opposition. But it’s American voters who may find it the most painful to read.

“Raila and Trump, the presidential candidates who believe the media is rigged and elections will be rigged too,” writes one Twitter user.

“Trump inciting his poor & uneducated whites to bring fracas if he dose [sic] not win, just like Raila does with his minions!” writes another.

Kenya knows what it means to have its democratic process upended. And although the comparisons to this year’s fraught U.S. presidential campaign are imperfect — international observers said Kenya’s 2007 vote was actually “flawed” and politicians on all sides fueled the subsequent violence — there is a sense that Kenyans have seen this movie before.

Having promoted the idea of a vast global conspiracy aimed at denying him the White House, Donald Trump says he won’t necessarily accept the electoral result. Many in Trump Nation say they’re expecting a revolution in the event of a win by Hillary Clinton, and some right-wing militias have reportedly already begun to mobilize. Against this backdrop, it’s not difficult to imagine some overzealous supporters of the Republican nominee rejecting the outcome and vowing to install him as the “people’s president,” as Odinga’s supporters threatened in 2007.

“People saying, ‘I won’t accept the result, and maybe I’ll take up arms.’ That is very striking, it is very chilling, and it has a familiar ring,” says Murithi Mutiga, a columnist at the Daily Nation, Kenya’s most widely circulated newspaper “The most dangerous parallel is preparing people for only one outcome: that we’ll either win or the outcome is rigged.”

Kenyan Sen. Naisula Lesuuda, a member of the ruling party, tells me that she also sees echoes of the traumatic 2007 election. “When you are telling people that the election will be rigged, you are preparing them psychologically to reject the result. You are preparing them for chaos. We have seen that here, and we have seen that in other African countries, but we, of course, don’t expect to see that in the U.S.,” she says.

There are more subtle parallels, as well. What Mutiga calls the “radical transparency” of the U.S. election, brought about by WikiLeaks and other high-profile leaks to the press, has exposed a seedy underside of American politics that feels very familiar in this part of the world.

“It’s a type of politics people recognize,” Mutiga says. “And the way you see them sharing news on Facebook is, ‘Oh, they are just like us. Their leaders are also compromised and on the take.’”

The filth seems to have repelled many Kenyans. Unlike the last two U.S. elections, when Barack Obama’s candidacy electrified his father’s ancestral homeland, the mood this time around has been more subdued. There are no minibuses emblazoned with the likenesses of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, although one still occasionally sees Obama-themed public transport.

The market for election-related merchandise is similarly barren. Whereas entire “Obama shops” dedicated to presidential swag popped up across Africa in 2008 and 2012, I’ve had trouble tracking down even a single Clinton- or Trump-themed trinket.

Read more: For Kenyans Who Survived Post-Election Violence, U.S. Race Feels Like Déjà Vu

Source: FP