Kenya president declared election winner
Observers say vote was fair; challenger calls it a ‘charade’
NAIROBI, Kenya — President Uhuru Kenyatta on Friday was officially declared the winner of a bitterly disputed election in Kenya, but his opponent, Raila Odinga, refused to concede defeat, criticizing the vote as a “charade” and edging the country closer to violence.
Kenyatta, 55, was re-elected with just over 54 percent of the vote in Tuesday’s election, easily surpassing the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff, an announcement from the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission said. Odinga, 72, the opposition leader, received 44.7 percent of the vote.
After a campaign marred by accusations of vote-rigging, fears of violence and the killing of a top election official, the vote was carried out peacefully and, international observers said, fairly.
There were relatively few protests in the days that followed, as political leaders, including members of the opposition, appealed to the public to remain calm.
But Odinga and his representatives have insisted that the vote was rigged and that he was the rightful winner.
On Friday, Odinga’s party, the National Super Alliance, refused to take part in the announcement of the election results, accusing the commission of releasing the outcome before addressing its concerns.
Top opposition party officials also indicated that they were unwilling to resolve their claims about election fraud in court, in comments that could be interpreted by supporters as a call to protest.
Protests in several opposition strongholds erupted shortly after Kenyatta’s victory was declared.
Police officers equipped with riot gear moved into some areas of Nairobi, the capital, and Kisumu, Kenya’s third-largest city and Odinga’s birthplace, where tear gas was used and live bullets were fired at protesters, according to witnesses.
In 2007, a vote that was widely believed to have been flawed touched off bloodshed that left at least 1,300 people dead and 600,000 displaced.
Voting systems in 2013 were afflicted by malfunctions that led to accusations of vote-rigging. Odinga has said he was robbed of victory because of vote-rigging in those last two contests.
Since Tuesday’s election, Odinga, a former prime minister who was running for president for a fourth time, has claimed that election commission servers had been hacked to award Kenyatta a 10-point lead.
He said Thursday that he had won 8.04 million votes, to 7.75 million votes for Kenyatta.