Unrest Continues in Kenya as Legitimacy of Kibaki's Victory Doubtful
Kenya remains prominent in the news amid continued political unrest as the legitimacy of President Mwai Kibaki's narrow victory is being questioned. The government has claimed that 148 people have been killed in the violence, but news reports are saying that more than 300 people have been killed. The horrific burning of a church in which people flocked to seek refuge, who were ultimately burned alive. Gangs of machete-wielding youths have been wreaking havoc on a country that has hardly been in the news.
In an article published Wednesday in The Herald, Kenya's oldest newspaper, the head of the country's electoral commission, Samuel Kivuitu, was quoted as saying that he did not know who had won the election. According to the Associated Press, he said that he has stated that he had been pressured to announce the results. International observers have also voiced doubts over the conduct of last week's vote. Ghanaian President John Kufuor, the head of the African Union, was due to arrive in Nairobi on Wednesday to act as a mediator, an AU spokeswoman told AP. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary David Milliband have also appealed for calm while expressing concern at "serious irregularities in the counting process."
Much of the violence is between supporters of Kibaki, from the majority Kikuyu tribe, and backers of opposition leader Raila Odinga, who is from the Luo tribe. Here we go again, tribe against tribe.
Kibaki was re-elected with 51.3 percent of the vote, to 48.7 percent for Odinga. Alexander Lambsdorff, the head of the EU Election Observation Mission in Kenya, cited discrepancies in vote counts, election observers being turned away from polling places and observers being refused entrance to the electoral commission vote-counting room.
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