Kenyan election: Riot breaks out in stronghold of opposition

Policemen fired live rounds in one location of the western Kenyan city of Kisumu on Wednesday to disperse stone-throwing supporters of opposition leader Raila Odinga, who claimed this week’s elections were rigged.

According to Reuters, a witness said a supporter of Odinga protesting in the Nairobi slum of Mathare was shot dead by the police.

Earlier, police fired tear-gas at a group of 100 chanting supporters of opposition leader Raila Odinga, shortly after their political leader claimed “massive” fraud in this week’s elections.

Witneses said after the police fired the tear gas, the protesters, who had been chanting “No Raila, no peace,” scattered.

Earlier, Odinga said hackers broke into Kenya’s election commission computer systems and database  overnight, leading to “massive and extensive” vote fraud that nullified the published victory of President Uhuru Kenyatta.

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission said Kenyatta maintained his strong lead in the presidential election count with 85 percent of polling stations reporting.

Its website showed Kenyatta with 54.8 percent of the vote against 44.3 per cent for opposition leader Odinga, a margin of nearly 1.4 million votes.

Meanwhile, the Kenya Human Rights Commission said it had discovered some discrepancies in an initial comparison between provisional results announced by the election commission and paper forms signed at polling stations by party agents.

It cited five examples, including a polling station in western Nandi county where the electoral board’s website recorded 439 rejected votes but the paper form only had four.

The commission is a well-known non-governmental organisation.

In 2007, tallying was stopped and the incumbent president declared the winner, triggering an outcry from Odinga’s camp. The ethnic and political violence that followed killed 1,200 people and displaced 600,000.

International Criminal Court cases against Kenyatta and his now-deputy, William Ruto, for helping direct that violence, collapsed as witnesses died or disappeared.

In 2013, Odinga took his concerns to court.

This time, he invoked the unsolved torture and murder of a top election official days before the vote to justify his fears of rigging.

“We fear this was exactly the reason Chris Msando was assassinated, so this could happen,” he said.

Kenya’s shilling firmed and bond prices rose on early results, but analysts said gains could be fragile.

“Kenyatta’s provisional win will soothe those investors who feared a leftist shift in economic policy,” said Hasnain Malik, global head of equities research at Exotix Capital.

“The most important issues are ahead of us: Does Odinga concede peacefully? His initial rhetoric suggests there is a risk he does not.”