Kenya: Odinga Leads in Election - Or Does He?

29 December 2007
allAfrica.com
blog

The Kenyan government published figures on the web Saturday showing that President Mwai Kibaki had taken a narrow lead in the Kenyan presidential elections.

But other major websites, including that of the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK), said Kibaki's principal challenger, Raila Odinga, was well ahead. Different sites indicated a lead varying from 340,000 to 890,000 votes.

At 3.30pm Kenyan time (12.30 GMT) on Saturday, the site of the Office of the Government Spokesperson said Kibaki had 2,394,099 votes and Odinga 2,388,721.

The ECK published what it called "verified results" - reflecting a lower vote count - at 12.30pm (9.30AM GMT) saying Odinga had 1,534,293 votes and Kibaki 1,122,924.

And unofficial results published at the same time by two major Kenyan newspapers - both reflecting many more votes counted - indicated that Odinga is ahead by a large margin.

The East African Standard listed "tentative results" listing 3,376,755 votes for Odinga and 2,485,552 for Kibaki.

And a graph on The Nation's website showed that Odinga had 4,356,092 votes and Kibaki 4,009,300.

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