Tense Kenya vote count enters final stretch
2013-03-08 09:25
Nairobi - Presidential frontrunner Uhuru Kenyatta held the
lead as the vote count in Kenya's election entered the final, nail-biting
stretch on Friday and he battled to avoid a second round in the critical race.
With just over a quarter of constituencies still to report
results, Kenyatta was hovering around the 50% threshold needed to avoid a
runoff and maintained a clear lead over his arch-rival, Prime Minister Raila
Odinga.
Kenyatta, the deputy prime minister and one of Africa's
richest men, faces a crimes against humanity trial at the International
Criminal Court over the deadly violence that erupted after the contested 2007
elections.
The tallying process - now entering its fourth day - has
been marred by allegations from both sides, including charges by Odinga's party
that results had been "doctored".
Kenyatta's party has also raised concerns over the
slow-moving vote count, complaining that the inclusion of spoiled ballots in
the overall total could potentially tip the balance in favour of a second
round.
The rigging claims, dismissed by Kenya's electoral
commission, have added to tensions in a nation still scarred by the weeks of
deadly violence following contested polls five years ago.
Over 1 100 people were killed and hundreds of thousands
forced to flee their homes in the 2007-8 bloody ethnic violence that shattered
Kenya's image as a beacon of regional stability.
As of 05:45 GMT, Kenyatta had won 4.7 million votes compared
to his rival Odinga's 4.1 million, with as many as three-quarters of Kenya's
14.3 million registered voters estimated to have cast a ballot.
Nail-biting final stretch
A final result could be announced later on Friday, although
the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) legally has until
Monday to announce the outcome of the closely-fought race.
To win outright and avoid a second round, a candidate must win
more than half of all votes cast, according to the constitution, as well as at
least 25% of votes in more than half of all 47 counties.
Odinga and Kenyatta - the son of independent Kenya's
founding president - have both publicly vowed there will be no repeat of the
2007-2008 bloodshed that broke out over the counting process.
Kenya has been largely calm in recent days apart from
isolated incidents of violence.
Odinga also ran for president last time and has always
insisted he was robbed of victory in 2007, which went to his main rival Mwai
Kibaki, who was backed by Kenyatta.
The vote tallying process has repeatedly come under fire
after an expensive electronic system to register and recognise voters - and
later to send results - suffered widespread failure.
After tallying had begun, election officials were forced to
resort to reading out results hand-delivered by returning officers, with
chartered airplanes and helicopters sent to pick up officials from remote
regions.
Initial results sent electronically showed that the spoiled
ballots made up more than five percent of votes cast, but the numbers dropped
from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands after the electronic system was
abandoned.
Rejected votes
IEBC chief Ahmed Issack Hassan on Thursday said the dramatic
drop was due to an error in the electronic system that had multiplied by eight
the number of rejected votes.
High numbers of spoiled ballots greatly added to the number
needed for a candidate to break the 50% threshold for a first round win, and
increasing the prospect of a runoff.
"We have evidence that the results we have received
have been doctored," Odinga's running mate Kalonzo Musyoka told reporters on
Thursday, although gave few details of the claims.
But he stressed that the accusations were "not a call
to mass action" as he pleaded for calm and stressed that the party was
"committed to the principle of rule of law".
However, Hassan said the electoral commission had seen no
evidence of rigging and that was "no room to doctor results
whatsoever".
- SAPA
