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Kibaki's party 'pressured me'
01/01/2008 22:29 - (SA)
Nairobi - The head of Kenya's electoral commission defended on Tuesday his decision to announce Mwai Kibaki's disputed re-election win saying he had come under pressure from the president's ruling party.
Commission chief Samuel Kivuitu said European envoys and the state-owned human rights commission had urged him to delay the announcement for a week while a probe was carried out.
In the end he admitted giving in to pressure from the ruling Party of National Unity and the smaller Orange Democratic Party-Kenya, which both wanted the results released immediately.
"I wanted to resign, but I thought that if I resign, citizens would think that I am afraid so I decided to bear the problem until the end," he told reporters in the capital.
"I was being pushed from many sides... then I made a decision at once," he added.
Kivuitu on Sunday declared President Mwai Kibaki the winner of the December 27 ballot despite allegations his party had tampered with the results.
Angry supporters of defeated opposition leader Raila Odinga went on the rampage and the lid was lifted off tribal tensions resulting in riots and inter-ethnic violence that has left at least 300 people dead.
Odinga flatly rejected the outcome of the elections while European Union observers said the polls fell short of international standards and called for an independent audit into the results.
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