Kisumu, Kenya - Kenyan opposition
supporters clashed with police and threw up burning barricades
on Thursday to challenge the legitimacy of an election rerun
likely to return Uhuru Kenyatta as president of East Africa's
chief economic and political powerhouse.
In the western city of Kisumu, stone-throwing youths heeding
opposition leader Raila Odinga's call for a voter boycott were
met by live rounds, tear gas and water cannon.
One man was shot dead and three others injured in Kisumu, a nurse at the main government hospital said.
"A young man, aged 17 or 18, was brought in heavily bleeding. We were giving him blood but he succumbed," said Henry Omosa, head nurse for casualty unit.
The young man was one of four people admitted to the hospital on Thursday with gunshot wounds that occurred during clashes between police and protesters, he said.
In Kibera and Mathare, two volatile Nairobi slums, riot
police patrolled. Protesters set fires in Kibera early in the
morning. Nearly 50 people have been killed by security forces
since the original August vote that Kenyatta won but which was
annulled by the Supreme Court due to procedural irregularities.
The election is being closely watched across East Africa,
which relies on Kenya as a trade and logistics hub, and in the
West, which considers Nairobi a bulwark against Islamist
militancy in Somalia and civil conflict in South Sudan and
Burundi.
While tensions simmered in some opposition strongholds, in
other areas the situation was calm.
Interior minister Fred Matiang'i told Citizen TV that
polling stations opened in over 90 percent of the country,
including Kiambu, where Kenyatta cast his ballot.
"We are requesting them (voters) humbly that they should
turn out in large numbers," Kenyatta said after voting. "We're
tired as a country of electioneering and I think its time to
move forward."
If some counties fail to hold elections, it could trigger
legal challenges to the run-off and could stir longer-term
instability in a country riven by deep ethnic divisions.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court was due to hear a case
seeking to delay the polls, but was unable to sit after five out
of the seven judges failed to show up.
"The lack of a quorum is highly unusual for a Supreme Court
hearing and has raised serious questions among Kenyan
stakeholders, including about possible political interference,"
a statement from the European Union said.
"Not hearing this case has de facto cut off the legal path
for remedy."
Picture: AFP
In Kisumu, the scene of major ethnic violence after a
disputed election in 2007, many schools designated as polling
stations were padlocked shut. Young men milled about outside.
In Kisumu Central, constituency returning officer John
Ngutai said no voting materials had been distributed and only
three of his 400 staff had turned up. One nervous official
described his election work as a "suicide mission".
"We don't have any options," Ngutai told Reuters as he and
two presiding officers sorted thousands of ballot papers into
piles, work that should have been completed the previous day.
Kisumu businessman Joshua Nyamori, 42, was one of the few
voters brave enough to defy Odinga's stay-away call but could
not cast his ballot.
"Residents fear reprisal from political gangs organised by
politicians. This is wrong," he said.
In the coastal city of Mombasa, protesters lit tyres and
timber along the main highway. Some polling stations had not
opened by 8am, and those that did had low turnout and four armed
police on guard - double the number on duty last time.
"We are not staying home. We are protesting and ensuring
there is no voting around this area," said Babangida Tumbo, 31.
In the western town of Migori, another opposition
stronghold, several hundred young men milled around on a main
road littered with rubble and burning barricades, according to
footage on the domestic NTV channel.
Picture: AFP
A decade after 1,200 people were killed over another
disputed election, many Kenyans are braced for trouble although
on the eve of the vote Odinga backed off previous calls for
protests and urged supporters to stay out of the way of police.
"We advise Kenyans who value democracy and justice to hold
vigils and prayers away from polling stations, or just stay at
home," he said in English.
Odinga's National Super Alliance coalition, which has
attacked polling staff in the run-up to the vote, is likely to
argue that the lack of open polling stations shows that the
re-run is bogus.
The head of the election commission said last week he could
not guarantee a free and fair vote, citing interference from
politicians and threats of violence against his colleagues. One
election commissioner has quit and fled the country.
Kenyatta, the U.S.-educated son of Kenya's founding father,
says the vote is legitimate. In central Nairobi, where support
for the two protagonists is more mixed, early turnout was
significantly down on August.
In a statement issued by the U.S. embassy, foreign missions
called for calm but acknowledged that the vote had been damaging
to regional stability.
"Following this election, there must be immediate,
sustained, open and transparent dialogue involving all Kenyans
to resolve the deep divisions that the electoral process has
exacerbated," it said.