President Daniel arap Moi’s 24-year rule drew to a close with scenes of uncharacteristic order and calm yesterday as a record number of Kenyans turned out to vote for his successor.
Nearly a hundred instances of electoral irregularity were reported around the country, including thousands of voters’ names being omitted from the roll, flagrant vote-rigging, and at least one murder. But by Kenyan standards this was small stuff: the election was the country’s biggest, most peaceful, and – first signs suggest – most transparent ever.
As polling closed in grey light and torrential rain in Nairobi, the police warned of rising tensionin the city’s slums, where thousands of registered voters were omitted from the electoral roll.
”Tension is building up in polling stations in all parts of the country, but mostly in Nairobi,” said a police representative, Kingori Mwangi.
”We are concerned. We are monitoring the situation closely. People who are not finding their names in the poll register are saying they will not go home or allow counting of votes.”
But with counting already under way, and preliminary results expected today, few thought that the election’s outcome would be shaped by violence, as has so often been the case in Kenya before.
A spate of recent opinion polls puts the 71-year-old opposition leader Mwai Kibaki at least 40 points ahead of Moi’s chosen successor, Uhuru Kenyatta – the son of Jomo, Kenya’s founding father. Western election observers said that they had seen nothing yesterday to contradict that finding.
”Kibaki will win,” said Katama Mkangi, an analyst at the United States International University in Nairobi. ”The will for Kibaki and for change is irresistible.”
Kibaki, a former vice-president under Moi who is now leading the National Alliance Rainbow Coalition (Narc), cast his vote in central Kenya from the back seat of his Mercedes, having suffered broken bones in a car crash two weeks ago.
”I know from tomorrow we will have decided that Narc will form the next government,” he told a jubilant crowd in his home village.
In Nairobi, 320 kilometres south, queueing voters joked that a frail leader was preferable to the strong-arm rule favoured by Moi’s Kanu party.
”Change, that’s what we want,” said Daniel Ochieng, outside the Kanyole polling station.
”If Kibaki can hold out for one term, that will be fine.”
Public support for Kenyatta, a 41-year-old businessman who has never been elected to office, appeared to be limited to his Gutundu constituency, 80 kilometres north of Nairobi.
As he cast his vote, Kenyatta reiterated what none of Kenya’s mostly impoverished people deny: that they ”need a new beginning… a break from the past”.
Yet in Kenya – where, perhaps not coincidentally, up to half the population is classed as born-again Christian – the many former Kanu cronies now standing for Narc seem more trusted to bring change.
”People are voting for the least corrupt parliamentary candidate, whatever his party,” said Stephen Timoi, a Masai leader in the southern town of Kajiado.
”But for a president, we must have something completely new.” – Guardian Unlimited Â