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Kibaki leads Kenyan election
27/12/2007 20:17 - (SA)
Nairobi - Kenya's President Mwai Kibaki
leads Thursday's presidential election with 47.4% of the
vote, versus 42.7 for opposition leader Raila Odinga, according
to an exit poll by a local independent observer group.
The Institute for Education in Democracy (IED), a respected
non-governmental organisation, gave the figures - which it was
constantly updating on its website - at 20:00 (1700 GMT)
based on more than 260 polling stations out of 20 000.
But an Odinga aide dismissed the exit poll, saying it did
not reflect reality.
"Exit polls are something alien to Kenya," Salim Lone told
Reuters. "People, especially in rural areas, are not keen to say
how they have voted because the fear the power of the state."
Tight contest
Millions of Kenyans voted throughout Thursday in an election
marred by delays, sporadic violence including three deaths, and
rigging charges from the opposition.
Kibaki, 76, is vying for the top job with former ally
Odinga, 62, who is determined to realise a long-held dream of
leading the region's top economy.
Counting began immediately on
Thursday evening, and official results were due on Friday.
Voters across the east African country's humid coast,
shantytowns and lush highlands cast ballots in the tightest
contest since independence from Britain in 1963.
Kibaki, whose National Rainbow Coalition unseated Kenya's
39-year ruling party in 2002, faces the possibility of losing
his re-election bid despite a sound economic record and the
backing of his Kikuyu tribe, the country's largest.
If Kibaki loses, he will be Kenya's first sitting president
ousted at the ballot box.
Analysts say the chance of a second
transfer of power in two elections shows democratic maturity.
Others fear it heightens the potential for trouble.
'Thuggery'
Near Nairobi's vast Kibera slum, gunmen shot dead one man
and wounded two others near a polling station. Police called it
"thuggery" but the opposition said the attack was on its agents.
In the opposition heartland of Nyanza, in west Kenya, a mob
chased a man accused of killing a relative of a local politician
two months ago, police said.
When he hid in a sugar plantation,
they set it alight and beat him to death as he fled.
Also in Nyanza, opposition supporters killed an agent of a
rival party, whom they had accused of bribery, by tossing him
out of moving car, a security source said. "He died on the spot.
Six other (accused agents) were handed over to the police."
Many of the 14 million eligible voters began queuing long
before voting stations opened at 06:00 (0300 GMT) for the
concurrent presidential and parliamentary votes.
Because of delays in opening, about a quarter of the 27 000
polling stations were kept open after the 17:00 (1400) closing
deadline, the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) said.
The delays stoked tensions in areas including Kuresoi, where
police fired teargas to chase away voters furious their names
were missing from registers.
In the northern town of Garissa,
police also used teargas to disperse voters turned away for
arriving late, witnesses said.
Rigging claims
Tempers also frayed in Odinga's Nairobi constituency.
After complaining to the ECK that his name was missing,
Odinga - who has led pre-election opinion polls -- was mobbed
by fans as he returned to vote in Kibera, Kenya's biggest slum.
He said the mix-up had been a "deliberate attempt" by the
government to rig the outcome in his constituency, but Kibaki's
party said he had gone to the wrong voting booth.
"Rigging claims are an attempt to subvert the election
process. Raila and his team do not want to accept the results if
they lose," Kibaki's Party of National Unity (PNU) said.
Chief EU election observer Alexander Graf Lambsdorff said he
had seen no evidence of fraud.
"The day has fulfilled our hopes
in that it has been conducted in a peaceful atmosphere with no
intimidation," he told Reuters.
- Reuters
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