Kenya Candidate Claims Rigging in Vote !!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Daanyeer]

Dec 30 09:24 AM US/Eastern
By TOM MALITI
Associated Press Writer Write a Comment





NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - Kenya's opposition candidate called on President Mwai Kibaki to concede on Sunday and accused him of rigging a chaotic vote count that has sparked two days of deadly clashes. The elections chairman was rushed from his headquarters under police protection when new scuffles broke out.
At least 14 people have died in rioting in Nairobi's slums and other opposition strongholds since the vote on Thursday.

"This government has lost all legitimacy and cannot govern," the opposition candidate, Raila Odinga said Sunday, who clung to a narrow 38,000-vote lead.

The electoral commission suspended announcing results Saturday night, promising to look into allegations of fraud. If Kibaki loses, he will be Kenya's first sitting president ousted at the ballot box.

Just minutes after elections head Samuel Kivuitu resumed reading the results in the closest race in Kenya's history, hecklers shouted "This is not a police state!" and "Justice!" Police holding clubs moved in soon after to escort elections officials from the room.

Nine people were killed in the Mathare shantytown Sunday, bringing the death toll around the country to at least 14 in two days of fighting, said police official Joshua Omukulong.

"These are our guns," said 24-year-old Cliff Owino, holding up a handful of rocks in Mathare, where young men were setting up roadblocks and building bonfires. "But a voting card is our atomic weapon."

Others were shouting "Kibaki must go!" and waving machetes in the air as buses and shops burned.

Odinga called on Kibaki to concede and asked for a recount, saying the electoral commission "cannot possibly address the multiple levels of fraud administered by this administration."

But Kibaki's camp urged patience for the official results, and accused Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement of being behind the violence. "ODM is responsible for all the incitement that is taking place right now," said Danson Mungatana, an official with Kibaki's Party of National Unity.

Kibaki's camp said they were not opposed to a recount, but were concerned about the effects of a delay.

Thousands of people were out in force for a second day in Nairobi's slums, enraged over the delays and shouting claims of rigging. The streets of the capital were largely deserted, with shops and restaurants shuttered and padlocked, but the shantytowns of Kibera and Mathare were scenes of chaos.

"What you are seeing now is small," warned Moses Ogolla, amid the noise and burning vehicles in Mathare. "Right now we are just trying to send a message. But if they say Kibaki wins, Kenya will never be the same again."

In Kisumu, residents fled as military police patrolled the city.

"There is no public transportation, the streets are deserted," said Lilian Ajode, 34, who left town on a bicycle taxi. "The people who are looting have nothing to lose."

Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, chief European Union election monitor, also voiced concerns about the counting process Sunday, saying there is "a big question mark over the tallying of results."

"Our observers have been turned away from several tallying centers without being given results," he said.

Hundreds of people died in election-related clashes in the months leading up to the vote, but most observers said the vote itself appeared generally orderly.

Kivuitu, the electoral commission chairman, acknowledged problems, including a constituency where voter turnout added up to 115 percent and another where a candidate ran away with ballot papers.

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey condemned the violence.

"Regardless of the eventual winners of this election, we call on Kenyans across the political spectrum to work together to advance democracy and national development," he said.

Supporters of 76-year-old Kibaki say he has turned Kenya's moribund economy into an east African powerhouse, with an average growth rate of 5 percent and a booming tourism industry.

He won by a landslide in 2002, ending 24 years in power by the notoriously corrupt Daniel arap Moi, who was constitutionally barred from extending his term.

But Kibaki's anti-graft campaign has largely been seen as a failure, and the country still struggles with tribalism and poverty. After the opposition took most of the parliamentary seats, he may find it difficult to rule even if he wins.

Odinga, a fiery 62-year-old former political prisoner, promised change and help for the poor. His main constituency is Kibera, home to at least 700,000 people who live in extreme poverty and the scene of many of Saturday's riots.

In recent months he has made it a priority to reach out to the country's middle class and businessmen, many of whom belong to Kibaki's tribe, the Kikuyu. Odinga belongs to the Luo tribe.

___

Associated Press writers Elizabeth A. Kennedy, Tom Maliti, Malkhadir M. Muhumed and Tom Odula contributed to this report.



Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.