Cries of fraud blunts Kenya poll
Odinga camp demands he be named president
KENYA’S election commission was preparing to release final results yesterday from a hotly disputed vote in which the opposition has already claimed victory, fanning tensions in the east African nation.
The National Super Alliance (NASA) opposition coalition on Thursday demanded its candidate, Raila Odinga, be declared president, claiming massive fraud was behind preliminary results that placed him far behind incumbent Uhuru Kenyatt
US ambassador Bob Godec joined foreign observers in urging parties to give the election commission (IEBC) space to finish its job and use legal means to deal with their grievances.
“Violence must never be an option. No Kenyan should die because of an election. Kenya’s future is more important than any election. Leaders above all need to make that clear,” Godec said.
Opposition strongholds were calm yesterday ahead of the final announcement, after pockets of protests in the western city of Kisumu and Nairobi slums, where police shot two protesters dead on Wednesday.
But memories are still raw of a disputed poll that led to two months of ethno-political violence in 20072008, leaving 1 100 dead and displacing 600 000.
Foreign observers praised a peaceful, credible voting process, but the mood quickly turned sour when Odinga rejected the results after only a few hours of counting.
Odinga first complained the electronically transmitted results were not being backed up by the required forms. He later unveiled details of an alleged hacking attack to manipulate results.
NASA then doubled down with a claim the IEBC was concealing results contained on its server that showed Odinga to be the winner.
While veteran opposition leader Odinga, 72, also claimed polls in 2013 were stolen from him, he took his grievances to the courts and ended up accepting his loss.
“We do not want to see any violence in Kenya. We know the consequences of what happened in 2008 and we don’t want to see a repeat of that,” Odinga told CNN.
But he repeated his assertion that “I don’t control anybody. People want to see justice.”
Kenyatta looked set for victory, with eight million votes to Odinga’s 6.7 million, according to the IEBC public website.
However, NASA provided documents purportedly obtained from IEBC servers via a “confidential source” showing that Odinga had 8.04 million votes, leading Kenyatta on 7.75 million.
The IEBC insists its electronic voting system – seen as key to avoiding fraud – was not compromised. — AFP