Photo: Nichole Sobecki/USAID

Uhuru Kenyatta taking an early lead in the general election (file photo).

Nairobi — KENYA's fourth presidential and general elections have turned out to be a bruising fight between Prime Minister Raila Odinga of CORD and Uhuru Kenyatta of the Jubilee Alliance.

The other candidates are trailing far behind. By 9 am yesterday, Uhuru was leading by 2,731,080 -- equivalent to 53.3 of votes registered. Raila followed closely with 2,301,742 votes, the equivalent of 42.06 per cent.

In a press conference at Bomas Returning Centre in Nairobi, Raila urged his supporters to remain calm as votes from his strongholds had had not yet been counted. But just as Uhuru's supporters can hardly wait to celebrate, a good number of Raila's supporters are getting jittery.

Uhuru is maintaining his lead and given his latest call to the TNA members, Raila may as well begin writing his political obituary. So far Uhuru has swept votes in his Central Province while Raila has prevailed significantly in the western side, his Luo land home. The elections are producing significant dramas.

Political stalwarts like Nicholas Biwot have lost. Biwott lost his seat at Keiyo East and so has Najib Balala, beaten by a younger Hassan Hassan in Mombasa constituency. Results of the elections are merely trickling to the IEBC returning centre at Bomas of Kenya.

Chairman of IEBC Issack hassan has told a press conference at the Centre that there has been a technical hitch in the transmission of the results. Returning officers would therefore have to travel physically to the centre to present the results.

He said the delay was also caused by the big number of voters, which entailed long counting and verification of the votes cast. Registered votes are 14,350,824. Counted votes came until then from only 13,735 polling stations while there are 33,000 polling stations. The delays are making people anxious, but Hassan has called upon them to exercise patience.