Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Clashes, boycott mar rerun of presidential vote in Kenya
NAIROBI, Kenya — Opposition supporters boycotted Thursday’s rerun of Kenya’s disputed presidential election, clashing with police in some parts of the East African country and forcing authorities to postpone voting in areas affected by the violence.
At least four people were killed.
While most of Kenya was peaceful, voter turnout was relatively low even in some regions considered to be strongholds for President Uhuru Kenyatta, who was declared the winner of an Aug. 8 election that later was nullified by the Supreme Court in a decision seen as precedentsetting for Africa.
Polling stations in some areas supporting opposition leader Raila Odinga didn’t open at all because of sporadic unrest in which police fired bullets and tear gas at stone-throwing protesters who heeded his call for a boycott and maintained that the election was not credible.
Voting in four counties, including the opposition stronghold of Kisumu, will be held Saturday, said Wafula Chebukati, chairman of Kenya’s electoral commission.
A police statement late Thursday said one person died of a gunshot wound in Kisumu County when about 300 people “stormed into” a vote counting center. It said another person was fatally shot in Homa Bay in western Kenya when hundreds of people tried to force their way into a police base.
A third person died at a Kisumu County hospital after being brought in by someone who said he had been shot in a confrontation, the statement said.
Earlier Thursday, a police source said another person was killed in Athi River town outside the capital, Nairobi. The police source spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters.
Police reported violence in five of Kenya’s 47 counties.
Protesters set fires and blocked roads in Kisumu, where 25 people were injured in clashes with police, said Aloyce Kidiwa, a county medical officer. The injuries included many gunshot wounds, Kidiwa said.
Not a single ballot box was delivered to central Kisumu’s 190 polling stations, said a senior election official, John Ngutai Muyekho. He sat with the uncollected boxes in a school guarded by security forces.
“If anyone comes to collect, I’m ready. But so far no one has,” Muyekho said.
One Kisumu school that saw huge lines of voters Aug. 8 was closed, its gates locked.
“We are not going to vote and we are not going to allow it,” said Olga Onyanga, an Odinga supporter.
Violence also erupted in Nairobi’s Kibera and Mathare slums. In Mathare, a photographer saw protesters stopping people to check their fingers for the telltale ink stains that proved they voted. In one case, they harassed a woman until police scattered them with tear gas.
The Supreme Court nullified the August election because it found what it called illegalities and irregularities — the first time a court in Africa had overturned a presidential vote. The ruling was criticized by Kenyatta, who seeks a second term. He voted again in his hometown of Gatundu.
Kenyatta received 54 percent of the vote in August; Odinga got nearly 45 percent in the earlier election.