Opposition headed for landslide in Kenyan elections

Veteran politician Mwai Kibaki and his opposition alliance appeared to be headed for a landslide victory in historic elections in Kenya, breaking the ruling party’s 39-year grip on power, according to partial results.

With up to 38% of the vote counted, the 71-year-old economist and head of the National Rainbow Coalition, had between a 37 and a 39-percentage point lead over Uhuru Kenyatta, candidate for the Kenyan African National Union (KANU), according to the Institute for Education in Democracy, an independent monitoring body, and the independent Kenya Television Network.

KANU governments have run the once prosperous nation, now plagued by rampant corruption and an ailing economy, since independence from Britain in 1963.

Raila Odinga, a leading member of the opposition alliance, dubbed NARC, said: “The Kenyan people have now spoken, and it is with great joy and humility that we accept their trust in president-elect Kibaki and NARC.”

The US State Department said both the government and opposition deserved credit for the conduct of the election.

“We have great hope that this demonstration of Kenyan democracy will lead toward economic reform and greater prosperity for the Kenyan people,” it said in a statement.

Kibaki, who injured an arm and an ankle in a recent automobile accident, remained at his home in an affluent Nairobi neighbourhood today.

Outgoing President Daniel arap Moi, who is also KANU chairman, hand-picked the politically inexperienced Kenyatta, 41, to be the party’s standard bearer, was constitutionally obliged to step down at the end of his current five-year term. One of Africa’s last “big men”, the 78-year-old has presided over Kenya for the last 24 years.

With 138 of the 210 constituencies reporting, KTN gave Kibaki 66% of the vote to Kenyatta’s 27%.

And with parliamentary results in for 143 constituencies, KTN said NARC had 97 seats and KANU 32. The remaining 14 were divided among three small parties. The institute’s figures for 113 constituencies reflected a similar pattern.

The Electoral Commission – increasingly criticised for incompetence – also gave Kibaki and NARC a similar lead with 87 constituencies reporting.

Some analysts said the presidential poll could be called by early tomorrow morning.

Turnout appeared to be around 60% of the country’s 10.5 million registered voters.

A number of ranking KANU officials, including Vice President Musalia Mudavadi and Internal Security Minister Julius Sunkuli, lost their seats.

Eliphas Nyamogo, a 29-year-old teacher, said: “I think the results reflect the wishes of Kenyans, people who have been yearning for change for a long time.

“People voted for change because they are tired of the current system, they had no trust in KANU portraying themselves as new. We were not just voting for Kibaki, but for the whole (NARC) team ... it offers so much potential for our country.”

Kibaki has promised free primary education to the nation of 30 million people, half of whom live on less than a US 1 a day. He has also pledged to rid the country of the widespread corruption that has kept foreign investors at bay and plunged Kenya into its worst economic crisis since independence.

Kibaki, who has been a leading opposition figure since multiparty politics were reintroduced in 1991, was Moi’s vice president from 1978 to 1988. A London School of Economics graduate, he was also Kenya’s longest-serving finance minister, holding the post from 1969 to 1982 – a period of relative prosperity.

He placed second to Moi in 1997 elections.

NARC has united more than 10 opposition parties – which in the past were hopelessly divided along tribal lines – and includes a number of former senior KANU members who defected in the months leading up to Friday’s vote.

If NARC and Kibaki do win, they face the daunting task or revitalising East Africa’s largest and most important economy and keeping the alliance together.