Early TV results: Kibaki trails in Kenya vote

[Suldaanka]

Early TV results: Kibaki trails in Kenya vote

 

By George Obulutsa and Daniel Wallis

 

NAIROBI, Dec 28 (Reuters) - Early tallies by Kenyan broadcasters showed President Mwai Kibaki trailing his main rival on Friday in the race to lead east Africa's biggest economy for the next five years.

 

Partial results from three main television stations all gave opposition challenger Raila Odinga -- the son of a nationalist hero -- a strong lead over his former ally, although a separate exit poll put Kibaki ahead in what many had forecast would be Kenya's closest ever election.

 

Were Odinga to win, this would make Kibaki the first of Kenya's three sitting presidents to be ousted by the ballot box in the 44 years since British colonial rule ended.

 

The unofficial results by the TV channels were compiled from tallies at counting centres. The latest, from KTN at 11 a.m. (0800 GMT), gave Odinga 1,370,938 votes to 916,804 for Kibaki.

 

As official counts slowly reached a Nairobi conference centre ringed by armed guards, the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) gave results from two out of 210 constituencies.

 

One chose Odinga and the other picked the president, both by large majorities in a reflection of Kenya's tribal allegiances.

 

The ECK said turn-out was the highest since multiparty politics was reintroduced in 1992, without giving a figure. Formal results were expected to trickle in throughout Friday, but officials said the process could stretch into Saturday.

 

Observers said Thursday's voting had gone smoothly, despite sporadic violence and allegations of rigging by both sides.

 

"The test for our democratic maturity is in the post-election period and how we conduct ourselves thereafter," police boss Hussein Ali told a news conference on Friday.

 

"For the winners, we trust you will exercise magnanimity. For the losers ... you can try another time."

 

An exit poll by the Institute for Education in Democracy, a respected non-governmental organisation, gave the president 50.3 percent versus 40.7 for Odinga. But its figures were based on just 311 polling stations of a total of 27,000.

 

"It is still too early to call," Ngari Gituku, a spokesman for Kibaki's Party of National Unity, told Reuters.

 

 

'ENVY OF AFRICA'

 

Diplomats say the poll was only the second truly democratic one in a nation that votes largely on tribal and geographic lines and spent 39 years under single-party rule broken only by Kibaki's landslide victory in 2002.

 

Kibaki, 76, wants a second five-year term before retiring to his highland tea farm after a political career that has spanned Kenya's post-independence history.

 

With a record of average economic growth of 5 percent, he has the support of his Kikuyu tribe, Kenya's largest and most economically powerful, but trailed narrowly in pre-vote polls.

 

Odinga, 62, wants to be the first in his Luo tribe to take the country's top job. That was the unrealised dream of his father, Kenya's first vice-president, whose falling out with founding President Jomo Kenyatta seeded the Luo-Kikuyu rivalry.

 

Should he win, Odinga will have to bring on board Kikuyu support and allay fears among some in business circles that the East Germany-educated businessman is a radical.

 

About 14 million Kenyans were eligible to vote, although turnout is expected to have been between 8 and 10 million.

 

"The ECK has run elections with efficiency and independence that should be the envy of the rest of Africa," the Daily Nation newspaper said in an editorial.

 

TV said various prominent figures were likely to lose their parliamentary seats, including the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai and Vice-President Moody Awori, as well as the ministers of health, roads, information and foreign affairs.

 

Another big name, Kamlesh Pattni, a tycoon accused of being the architect of a graft scandal that nearly ruined Kenya's economy, also looked set to lose his bid to win a Nairobi seat. (Additional reporting by Duncan Miriri, Joseph Sudah, Wangui Kanina, Andrew Cawthorne, Bryson Hull, Helen Nyambura-Mwaura and Nicolo Gnecchi, Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)