FRIDAY, 3.15PM:
WITH incumbent Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi certain to win the presidential elections, attention has shifted to parliament, where Moi’s Kenya African National Union (Kanu) party is only narrowly ahead of the combined opposition.
On Friday afternoon, Kenyan media were reporting that the ruling party has 92 seats against the opposition’s 90 seats, with several results still outstanding. The Democratic Party has 34 of the seats. Moi himself has 39,5% of the vote with 170 out of the 210 results in. His closest challenger, former vice president Mwai Kibaki, has 32,5% of the vote.
FRIDAY, 10.15AM:
RESULTS in the Kenyan elections reported by the private Kenya Television Network show that incumbent President Daniel arap Moi is certain to be re-elected to his fifth and final five-year term.
KTN reported results from 170 of the 210 constituencies, which showed Moi and his party well in the lead. The president held his parliamentary seat with 99% of the vote in his constituency, while his party leads the race for parliamentary seats.
Final, official results in Kenya’s third multiparty elections since independence from Britain in 1963 are not expected before the weekend. Three main opposition candidates said on Thursday that they will reject a victory by the 73-year-old Moi, alleging he could win the drawn-out election only with vote-rigging. In aveiled threat of violence, opposition leaders on Thursday warned Moi that he is leading the country to civil war.
With unofficial results reported from 69% of constituencies, Moi held a nearly 336 000-vote lead, KTN reported. Moi had 1 686 742 votes, followed by Mwai Kibaki, a former vice-president, with 1 351,164. After Moi and Kibaki, Raila Odinga had 560 594 votes, Michael Wamalwa trailed with 383 421 votes, and Charity Ngilu, Kenya’s first female presidential candidate, had 228 284, KTN reported.
Riot police were deployed Thursday to guard uncounted ballots and calm a dispute at a Nairobi counting centre set off by an addition error. A brawl erupted when Moi won the vote there by two votes. After a recount, Kibaki won with 17 154 votes to Moi’s 16 651.
Kibaki, who served as Moi’s vice president for 10 years, and Odinga, the son of the late Kenyan opposition leader Oginga Odinga, held a joint news conference on Thursday to denounce election procedures. Wamalwa endorsed their remarks in a fax. “We shall not accept rigged elections, and … we shall co-operate with all other democratic forces in ensuring that justice and peace are achieved,” Kibaki said.
Meanwhile, the group that spearheaded the move for political reforms in Kenya, the National Convention Executive Council, said flatly that the disorganised election should be declared null and void. Kenyan and foreign observers have expressed reservations about how the vote was conducted, but have not called for a rerun.