Election vote-rigging claims spark violent clashes in Kenya

Violence has broken out in Kenya after opposition leader Raila Odinga alleged electoral fraud.

He said hackers used the identity of a murdered official to infiltrate the database of the country’s election commission and manipulate results.

Soon after Mr Odinga spoke on television, angry protesters in the opposition stronghold of Kisumu in the south-west burned tyres, set up roadblocks and clashed with police.

Police opened fire on people protesting at the election results in another opposition stronghold, killing one person.

The shooting happened in South Mugirango constituency in Kisii county, said Leonard Katana, a regional police commander.

With results from nearly all of the polling stations counted, President Uhuru Kenyatta was ahead of Mr Odinga in his bid for a second term.

Many parts of Kenya, east Africa’s commercial hub, were calm a day after the elections for president and more than 1,800 other posts down to county level.

But the violence brought back memories of the unrest after the 2007 vote in which more than 1,000 people were killed.

Mr Odinga lost that election. He also lost the 2013 vote to Mr Kenyatta and took allegations of vote-tampering to the Supreme Court, which rejected his case.

Mr Odinga, a former prime minister, blamed Mr Kenyatta’s party for the alleged hacking of the election database.

“The fraud Jubilee has perpetuated on Kenyans surpasses any level of voter theft in our country’s history,” he tweeted. “This time we caught them.”

Mr Odinga claimed that hackers used the identity of Christopher Msando, an election official in charge of managing information technology systems.

On 31 July, officials announced Mr Msando had been tortured and killed, alarming Kenyans who feared a recurrence of political violence that has been fuelled by ethnic divisions.

Mr Msando had sought to reassure voters that election results would not be tampered with. Rafael Tuju, a top official in Mr Kenyatta’s party, said the opposition’s claims were unfounded.

Kenya’s election commission said it would investigate Mr Odinga’s allegations.

It added: “For now, I cannot say whether or not the system has been hacked.”

Mr Kenyatta was leading with 54.34 per cent and Mr Odinga had 44.78 per cent after votes at nearly 39,000 of the 40,883 polling stations were counted, according to the election commission.