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Historic elections progressing peacefully

As Friday saw millions of Kenyans take part in historic elections, fears of widespread violence appeared to have been largely unfounded. The historic poll, in which a new president, new parliament and new civic representatives were to be elected went on quietly in many polling stations around the country without any major incidences of violence. In some centres, the long morning queues had vanished by midday. A number of people who were able to vote and who were interviewed by IRIN said they had "voted for change". "We need change and its time for change," Meshack Onyango told IRIN at a polling station in Nairobi's sprawling Kibera slum area. President Daniel arap Moi - who has ruled the country since 1978 - is due to retire after completing two five-year terms, the maximum allowed according to constitutional changes made in 1992, at the same time as multiparty politics were reintroduced to Kenya. Early December opinion polls by various local and international institutions had indicated that Mwai Kibaki, presidential candidate for the opposition National Rainbow Coalition (NARC), was tipped to win about 68 percent of the total vote cast, followed by Uhuru Kenyatta, the candidate of the ruling Kenya African National Union and Moi's preferred successor, who was forecast to achieve 21 percent. The fear of violence in some polling stations had reportedly deterred some people, particularly women, from turning up to exercise their democratic right. Millicent Kanini, a resident of Kibera, told IRIN that many women had been scared away by campaign violence and had opted to stay at home. "The environment has been very hostile so they have taken cover. Their votes are wasted," Kanini said. According to Kanini, women's abstinence from the polls was likely to negatively affect their representation in decision making. "Women in this country need a change, economically, socially and through representation," Kanini said. "When all the sectors in the country fail to work, women tend to feel the effects more," she added. The electoral process was also tarnished in some areas by claims of irregularities, which were thought to have prevented hundreds of registered electors from casting their votes. Some frustrated voters gathered at the Nairobi offices of the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK), the body charged with supervising the elections, claiming they had been unfairly prevented from voting as a result of discrepancies between the central electoral register and the registers held at polling stations. Many complained they had confirmed their names were listed in the central register at the ECK offices, yet they were not allowed to vote because their names did not appear on lists at their respective polling stations, even though they were in possession of valid voting cards. Some claimed only the names of people from certain communities were omitted from the polling station registers. "If you have valid documents, why should you not be eligible to vote? We think our names were omitted on the basis of tribes," one angry voter told IRIN outside the ECK offices. Another voter told IRIN he had travelled from a rural area to vote in Nairobi, only to be told that his identity card number had been listed under someone else's name, and he had therefore been prevented from voting. Raila Odinga, a leading member of NARC told IRIN he had filed a letter of complaint with the electoral commission chairman over the issue. "There were consultations between the parties and the ECK and it was agreed that the 2002 poll register should be used. At the time, the commission did not disclose the extent of errors in the register," Odinga told IRIN. According to Odinga, the extent of errors in the poll register was "too large" and could be a "deliberate" effort to rig elections. If not corrected, Odinga added, the irregularities could lead to the disenfranchisement of some voters. "These were not computer errors but artificially introduced errors to bar some people from voting," Odinga claimed. "Basically what they are telling us is that they are so inefficient that, just to transfer names from one register to another, they insert errors of up to 20 percent," Odinga added. No immediate comment was available from ECK officials.

This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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