How Kenyatta turned ICC indictment to his campaign advantage

But far from deterring voters, the impending trial seems to have had the opposite effect.

Far from having been a handicap, Uhuru Kenyatta's indictment for crimes against humanity galvanised his supporters, giving the already formidable machinery of his coalition the edge, analysts said.

Kenyatta, 51, was proclaimed president Saturday after an outright win in the first round with 50.07% of the votes, against 43.31% for his main rival Raila Odinga, 68, who has vowed to take his complaint for "massive tampering" to the Supreme Court,

Uhuru Kenyatta should become the first presidential candidate to take power before having to fly off a few months later to appear in a trial likely to last at least two years, at the Hague-based International Criminal Court.

But far from deterring voters, the impending trial seems to have had the opposite effect.

"The ICC process helped" Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto, who is also indicted for his alleged role in the violence that followed the 2007 presidential poll, said Daniel Branch, an author and academic at Britain's Warwick University.

"It gave them a powerful message, a real motivation for victory and kept the debate on them the whole time. Odinga was unable to seize the initiative back," Branch went on.

Kenyatta's indictment enabled him to spin the narrative that his community had to "mobilise ... against the enemy who took our son out of here," said Musambayi Katumanga, a political scientist from Nairobi University.

The ICC suspects Kenyatta of having paid the Mungiki, a sect-like criminal gang notorious for beheading its victims, to lead reprisal attacks and defend the Kikuyu community when Kenya was on the brink of civil war after the disputed 2007 poll.

The president elect rejects those accusations.

Kenyan voters may have wondered how Kenyatta and Ruto will manage the country from The Hague where they are supposed to appear in court in person, starting May 28 for Ruto and July 9 for Kenyatta.

Chewing gum and scaling the stairs

Ruto, 46, famously explained that he was quite capable of doing the two things at the same time as "we can chew gum and scale the stairs at the same time".

Even in Kenyatta's camp, one quarter of his supporters admitted to wondering about the question, an opinion poll by Ipsos-Synovate in late February showed.

At the end of the day voters seem to have overcome their doubts.

The fact that several foreign diplomats and officials raised the ICC as an issue did not go down well with many Kenyans and likely strengthened Kenyatta's vote.