Kenya Opposition Poised To Sweep

Kenya Opposition Poised to Sweep

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

NAIROBI, Kenya — The opposition appeared to be sweeping Kenya’s elections, according to preliminary results released on Friday, with a populist challenger poised to unseat the incumbent president and several high profile ministers voted out of office.

With nearly half the vote counted late Friday night, the Kenyan election commission said that Raila Odinga, a flamboyant politician and businessman campaigning as champion of the poor, held a sizable lead of 57 percent of the vote, compared with 39 percent for Mwai Kibaki, the incumbent president who is known for boosting Kenya’s economy but favoring his own tribe.

Perhaps even more telling, though, was the rising casualty count among Mr. Kibaki’s inner circle. The foreign minister, the defense minister, the information minister, the vice-president and more than a dozen other politicians considered to be the nucleus of Kenya’s politico-economic establishment have lost their Parliament seats and therefore their influential jobs, the election commission confirmed on Friday.

It seems that the withering attacks by Mr. Odinga and his party, the Orange Democratic Movement, had found their mark. Kenya’s 14 million voters — who turned out in record numbers on Thursday, with many people waiting hours in miles-long lines — seemed ready for change.

“This vote is more anti-Kibaki than pro-opposition,” said Chweya Ludeki, a political science professor at the University of Nairobi. “The president was seen as doing a bad job in terms of ethnic balance.”

Mr. Odinga, 62, has promised to share the fruits of Kenya’s growing prosperity more equitably and end the pattern of tribal favoritism that has been at the core of Kenyan politics since independence in 1963.

So far the election period has been relatively peaceful, with a few scattered bursts of violence but no widespread turbulence. Foreign election observers, including the American ambassador to Kenya, have praised the process, saying it was free and fair, though at times a little chaotic.

However, Mr. Odinga’s party is now warning that unless the government speeds up the vote counting process, anxiety could sweep across the country and incite serious violence.

“The political temperature is rising,” said Joseph Nyagah, a leader of the Orange Democratic Movement.

The movement said that the election commission was not operating independently, and that the government was upset about losing power and pressuring election officials to delay the results.

“We live in Kenya,” Mr. Nyagah said. “We are Kenyans. We know what is happening.”

Elections officials denied there was any conspiracy to delay the results and said that record turnout and the contentiousness of the election was slowing the process down. Election officials said a winner would be declared on Saturday.

Closely contested elections are something new in Kenya. For the most of the country’s post-colonial history, Kenya was ruled by a single party. Mr. Kibaki, a career politician who has been in government since independence, brought an end to that by winning the presidency in 2002 as leader of Kenya’s opposition.

But he failed to make good on his promises to stop corruption and was accused of favoring the Kikuyu elite, the tribe that has dominated business and politics in Kenya since independence. Mr. Kibaki, 76, is a Kikuyu.

Mr. Odinga says he will be different. For starters, he is a Luo, another big tribe in Kenya but one that many Kenyans feel has not gotten its fair due.

He is also an unusual blend of privilege and populism. His father was a rich businessman and the country’s first vice president but espoused socialist values. When it came time for college, young Raila was sent to East Germany. He also named his son Fidel Castro, in honor of Cuba’s president.

Mr. Odinga has been in parliament for 15 years and on Friday, election officials announced that he had successfully defended his seat representing an enormous slum on the outskirts of Nairobi. Under Kenyan law, the president must also be a member of parliament.

Though there were some ideological issues separating the leading politicians, like strong central government versus federalism, tribe seemed to matter most. According to results aired on KTN, a Kenyan television station, Mr. Kibaki was winning 98 percent of the vote in the Kikuyu highlands, whereas Mr. Odinga had 90 percent of the vote in a predominantly Luo province in western Kenya.

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