Kenya election neck-and-neck
Updated on 29 December 2007
Kenya's presidential rivals are neck-and-neck with nearly 90 per cent of results counted, as accusations of rigging ignite violence across the nation.
Chaos reigned as the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) announced latest results showing opposition challenger Raila Odinga leading President Mwai Kibaki by just 38,000 votes on a tally of 180 of a total 210 constituencies.
But the ECK head was interrupted after reading tallies from seven other constituencies that would have put Kibaki in the lead by about four times as big a margin.
Scuffles broke out and police moved in after an opposition politician heckled ECK Chairman Samuel Kivuitu and repeatedly demanded a recount in one constituency.
"Nobody can push me, not even you!" Kivuitu told scores of party agents, politicians and journalists packed into a Nairobi conference centre ringed by armed guards.
The ECK gave Odinga 3.88m votes to 3.84m for the president from the 180 constituency results.
'Nobody can push me, not even you.'Samuel Kivuitu
Delays announcing official results fuelled tensions across the nation, with political parties trading rigging accusations and riots erupting in most major cities.
Both Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) and Kibaki's Party of National Unity (PNU) had earlier claimed victory and the leadership of the region's biggest economy for the next five years, citing their own agents' reports.
Meanwhile, youths from rival tribes fought, looted and burned homes, mostly in opposition strongholds. Police fired teargas and several people died in scenes marring what foreign observers had praised as broadly peaceful polls on Thursday.
If Odinga, a wealthy businessman who paints himself as a champion of the poor, fulfils a long-held ambition to lead Kenya, Kibaki would become the first of the country's three post-independence leaders to be ejected by the ballot box.
The opposition led early tallies, but as Kibaki narrowed the gap overnight, Odinga's party said it feared fraud.
From Kisumu in the west to Mombasa on the coast and many towns in between, trouble broke out on Saturday pitting Odinga's Luo supporters against members of Kibaki's Kikuyu ethnic group.
The tribes, two of Kenya's biggest, have a long history of rivalry during the country's four decades of independence.
