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NAIROBI: Uhuru Kenyatta, indicted for crimes against humanity, was declared winner of Kenya’s presidential election yesterday, but rival Raila Odinga said he would challenge the outcome in court and asked supporters to avoid violence.
Kenyatta, Kenya’s richest man and son of Kenya’s founding president, faces trial after the disputed 2007 presidential vote that unleashed a wave of tribal killings. His win avoided what could have been a divisive a run-off penciled in for April.
With 51-year-old Kenyatta in the top job, Kenya will become the second African country after Sudan to have a sitting president indicted by the International Criminal Court.
The United States and other Western powers, big donors to the east African nation, said before the vote that a Kenyatta win would complicate diplomatic ties with a nation viewed as a vital ally in the regional battle against insurgency.
Kenyatta said in his acceptance speech that he and his team would cooperate with international institutions and that he expected the international community to respect Kenya’s sovereignty.
“We recognize and accept our international obligations and we will continue to co-operate with all nations and international institutions — in line with those obligations,” he said.
After saying Kenyatta secured 50.07 percent of the vote, edging over the 50 percent needed to avoid a second round, the chairman of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, Issack Hassan, announced: “I therefore declare Uhuru Kenyatta the duly elected president of the Republic of Kenya.”
Shortly afterwards, Hassan handed a certificate of the results to Kenyatta, who had arrived after the declaration. Kenyatta thanked him and went to a nearby university campus in the capital where delivered his acceptance speech.
Many in the election center cheered, although celebrations started in the early hours yesterday after provisional results indicated Kenyatta’s victory. Supporters thronged the streets of Nairobi and his tribal strongholds, lighting fluorescent flares and waving tree branches and chanting “Uhuru, Uhuru.”
Violence flared briefly in Odinga’s heartlands where police fired teargas at supporters of the defeated candidate who were throwing stones. “No Raila, no peace,” they chanted at the scene near the western city of Kisumu, which was devastated by violence after the 2007 vote.
Odinga, 68, said he would have conceded if the vote was fair, adding that there was “rampant illegality” in the electoral process and that “democracy was on trial in Kenya” and he would challenge it in court.
“Any violence now could destroy this nation forever, but it would not serve anyone’s interests,” he said.
Odinga, who secured 43.3 percent of the vote, had also questioned the election process before the vote and during the count his party officials had called for tallying to stop.
The election commission, plagued by technical problems that slowed the count, took five days to announce the result. It dismissed accusations of irregularities.
International observers broadly said the vote and count had been transparent so far and the electoral commission, which replaced a discredited body, said it delivered a credible vote.