Kenya opposition demands Odinga be declared president

Nairobi: Kenya’s main opposition coalition demanded that its candidate Raila Odinga be declared president, claiming it had evidence he had won an election that has already led to angry protests over fraud claims.

The latest allegations by the National Super Alliance are likely to further ratchet up tensions a day before official results are expected from Tuesday’s vote.

President Uhuru Kenyatta has an unassailable lead in provisional results, but Odinga claims these are a “sham” result of a massive hacking attack on the electronic vote tallying system.

Heads of foreign observer missions from the European Union, African Union, Commonwealth and Carter Center urged party leaders to be patient and refrain from inflaming tensions, expressing confidence in the election commission (IEBC).

However, shortly after they spoke, one of the alliance’s leaders, Musalia Mudavadi, gave a televised press conference yesterday, unveiling new claims from “confidential sources” within the election commission that their servers showed Odinga was the true winner.

Mudavadi said he would provide data and screenshots showing that on the election commission servers, Odinga was shown to have 8.04 million votes against Kenyatta with 7.75 million.

The commission’s public website, which is publishing results as they stream in electronically from polling stations, shows Kenyatta with 8.1 million votes ahead of Odinga with 6.7 million.

According to the website, results are in from 98% of polling stations; however, the election commission has urged patience as it crosschecks results with scanned forms.

“Evidently, the accurate and lawful results in the presidential election is the transmission received from the polling stations and contained in the IEBC servers and not the unverified displays,” said Mudavadi.

“We demand that the IEBC chairperson announce the presidential election results forthwith and declare Raila Amolo Odinga ... as the duly elected president.”

Mudavadi, however, urged Kenyans to “remain calm at this point in time”.

Election commission chief Wafula Chebukati had earlier urged parties to “exercise restraint” as results were being finalised.

“We are working hard to ensure we get the final results within the shortest time possible. We expect all the presidential results ... will reach the national tallying centre by 12pm tomorrow (Friday).”