Kenyans fear violence over poll dispute
NAIROBI: Kenya’s opposition said yesterday it would “not be a party” to the election commission’s imminent announcement of the result of the presidential vote because its concerns had not been addressed.
Provisional results from polling stations show President Uhuru Kenyatta with a lead of 1.4 million votes as he vies for a second and final five-year term.
Opposition candidate Raila Odinga’s camp has disputed the count and said it would accept the election result only if allowed to see raw data on the commission’s computer servers. Odinga has lost the last two elections, claiming fraud in both cases.
Many Kenyans fear a repeat of the violence that followed the 2007 contested election, when about 1 200 people were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced as political protests led to ethnic killings.
“We raised some very serious concerns, they have not responded to them. As NASA (the opposition coalition), we shall not be party to the process they are about to make,” senior opposition official Musalia Mudavadi said.
James Orengo, chief election agent for the opposition coalition, said: “This has been an entire charade.
“The Kenyan people have never disappointed… every time an election has been stolen, the Kenyan people have stood up to make sure changes are made to make Kenya a better place.
“Going to court, for us, is not an alternative. We have been there before.”
Earlier, Orengo had called for the candidates and observers to be given access to the election commission’s servers so there could be a transparent audit of data from 41 000 polling stations across the country.
Yakub Guliye, election commissioner in charge of information technology, said the opposition had not made a formal request and it would not act on a verbal request.
Odinga’s camp has said figures released by the commission since Tuesday’s vote were “fictitious” and that “confidential sources” within the commission had provided figures showing Odinga had a large lead in the race.
The election commission rejected the claims, saying that they contained basic mathematical errors. – Reuters