Kenyatta leads Kenya election results as opposition cries foul

Nairobi, Kenya | AFP |  Kenya’s opposition coalition rejected the preliminary results of the presidential election on Wednesday, calling them “fake” and disputing tallies that showed President Uhuru Kenyatta well on his way to being re-elected.

The allegation by Kenyatta’s main challenger Raila Odinga set the stage for a protracted and possibly violent dispute over the results of Tuesday’s election to decide the leader of east Africa’s most vibrant democracy.

Similar allegations of voter fraud after the 2007 general election — where Odinga made an unsuccessful bid for the presidency — led to months of ethnically-driven political violence that killed 1,100 people and displaced 600,000.

Speaking to reporters, Odinga objected to partial results released by the electoral commission (IEBC) that show Kenyatta leading with 55 percent of the 11 million ballots counted against Odinga’s 44 percent, a difference of nearly 1.3 million votes.

Odinga claimed the IEBC had not provided documents that would show how the tallies were arrived at.

“It is the machine that has voted,” Odinga told reporters. “These results are wrong.”

He alluded to the death of Chris Msando, a key administrator of a biometric voting system that the IEBC said would guard against fraud, whose tortured and strangled body was found on the outskirts of Nairobi earlier this month.

“We fear that this is the precise reason why Mr. Chris Msando was assassinated,” Odinga said, referring to his fraud claims.

#ElectionsKE: Kenyan opposition leader Odinga rejects partial vote results https://t.co/3XKnMdzw2S pic.twitter.com/Ji2CbFChFj

— The Independent (@UGIndependent) August 9, 2017

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– No backing down –

Odinga, 72, is taking his fourth and likely final stab at the presidency. He claims the elections in 2007 and 2013 were stolen from him, and has occasionally said he could only lose this year’s vote if it was rigged.

The IEBC was undeterred by Odinga’s statements, with commissioner Roslyn Akombe saying that despite a request by an unnamed political party to stop publishing preliminary results, “as a commission we decided that as part of the commitment we made to the voters and the Kenyan people, transparency and accountability are part of them.”

“This is why, as a commission, we have decided we will continue to display the results,” she said.

The contest between Odinga and Kenyatta — old foes who previously faced off when Kenyatta was first elected in 2013 — was expected to be close, and emotions are high after a bad-tempered campaign marred by opposition claims of a plot to rig the vote.

Raphael Tunju, secretary-general of Kenyatta’s Jubilee party, shrugged off Odinga’s allegations.

“I don’t expect anything else from NASA,” he said, referring to Odinga’s National Super Alliance party.