Fears of further violence as Odinga claims presidency of Kenya

KENYA’S disputed election was thrown into further turmoil yesterday after the losing opposition said the result had been faked and demanded its leader be made president.

Amid mounting anxiety in a country haunted by its history of post-election violence, Raila Odinga’s opposition coalition accused the body responsible for conducting the poll of deliberately denying its leader the presidency. Widening an alleged conspiracy to hand reelection to President Uhuru Kenyatta, the opposition said that a “whistleblower” at the electoral commission had disclosed the existence of a hidden database showing that Mr Odinga had beaten his rival by 250,000 votes.

“We demand that the IEBC chairperson announce the presidential election results forthwith and declare Raila Amolo Odinga … as the duly elected president,” Musalia Mudavadi, one of the opposition coalition’s leaders, told a press conference.

Provisional results released by the commission, known as the IEBC, on its website indicated that Mr Kenyatta had a lead of more than 1.4 million votes – or nearly 10 per cent.

The allegations, which leave the country in an increasingly perilous and uncertain position, come a day after Mr Odinga rejected the result, claiming that IEBC computer servers had been hacked to alter the result.

Kenya’s electoral commission denied the allegations, with one official telling Reuters that the opposition did not have “any credible data” on the results, but the IEBC’S chairman, Wafula Chebukati, admitted that an attempt to hack the database had been made. He insisted it had been thwarted.

Mr Odinga’s defeat in an election 10 years ago triggered the worst violence in independent Kenya’s 54-year history, killing more than 1,300 people and forcing 600,000 more to flee their homes.

This time small-scale protests have broken out in the slums of Nairobi and elsewhere in the country and police shot dead at least two protesters they accused of looting.

Now that Mr Odinga has not just rejected the result but also claimed victory, the prospect of an angry backlash by his supporters seems much higher if President Kenyatta is formally given a second and final five-year term.

An official declaration is expected today.

Mr Odinga has long nursed a sense of grievance after being on the losing side of three questionable elections. But there is greater scepticism about his claims this time around. John Kerry, the former US secretary of state, said he had seen nothing to make him question the poll’s integrity.