Uhuru Kenyatta, facing crimes against humanity charges, led Kenya’s presidential vote as the electoral commission rejected his opponent’s call to stop tallying because of flaws and alleged manipulation. The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission said it had found no cases where votes cast exceeded the number of registered voters, as Prime Minister Raila Odinga’sCoalition for Reform and Democracy, or CORD, alleged earlier in the day, Chairman Issack Hassan said. “With the rigorous verification in place, there is no room to doctor the results whatsoever by any election official,” he told reporters in Nairobi, the capital. “We cannot stop tallying. This is a legal process.” Kenyatta, a deputy prime minister, received 3.13 million votes and Odinga got 2.56 million of the ballots declared from 45 percent of constituencies, according to the commission. Accusations by Odinga that he was robbed of victory in the last presidential election in December 2007 sparked two months of clashes that left more than 1,100 people dead and another 350,000 homeless.
The unrest curbed growth in East Africa’s largest economy to 1.5 percent in 2008 from 7 percent a year earlier and disrupted key trade routes for landlocked neighbors including Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi.
… The electoral commission’s announcement of provisional presidential results, which were to be sent electronically from polling stations, stopped after the system failed. The IEBC opted to move ahead with its final tally, which by law requires the physical presentation of constituency returns in Nairobi.
Musyoka cited the failure of electronic voter- identification devices, the collapse of the real-time results system and the electoral commission’s refusal to allow CORD officials to verify results at the tallying center in Nairobi as “issues of grave concern to us.”
“The responsibility falls squarely with the IEBC,” Musyoka said. CORD officials are “leaving our options open,” he said when asked whether the coalition would take its complaints to Kenya’s courts.
Full Article: Kenyatta Leads in Kenyan Election as Opponent Urges Recount – Bloomberg.
