Declare Odinga president
Kenya's main opposition coalition yesterday demanded that its candidate Raila Odinga be declared president, claiming it had evidence he had won an election that has already led to angry protests over fraud claims.
The latest allegations by the National Super Alliance (Nasa) are likely to further ratchet up tensions a day before official results are expected from Tuesday's vote.
President Uhuru Kenyatta has an unassailable lead in provisional results, but Odinga claims these are a "sham" result of a massive hacking attack on the electronic vote tallying system.
Heads of foreign observer missions from the European Union, African Union, Commonwealth and Carter Center urged party leaders to be patient and refrain from inflaming tensions, expressing confidence in the election commission (IEBC).
However shortly after they spoke, one of Nasa's leaders Musalia Mudavadi gave a televised press conference unveiling new claims from "confidential sources" within the IEBC that their servers showed Odinga was the true winner.
Mudavadi said he would provide data and screenshots showing that on the IEBC servers, Odinga was shown to have 8.04 million votes against Kenyatta with 7.75 million.
The IEBC public website, which is publishing results as they stream in electronically from polling stations, shows Kenyatta with 8.1 million votes ahead of Odinga with 6.7 million.
Odinga, 72, who claims elections in 2007 and 2013 were stolen from him, on Wednesday charged that hackers broke into the IEBC's systems and rigged the count using the log-in details of top IT official Chris Msando, found murdered and tortured last month.
His allegations sparked isolated protests in his strongholds in several Nairobi slums and the western city of Kisumu on Wednesday, where protesters engaged in running battles with riot police.
The capital's police chief said officers shot dead two men who had allegedly attacked them with machetes. In the southeastern Tana River region, police killed two alleged knife attackers who stormed a vote-tallying centre and stabbed one person.
On Thursday many businesses remained closed and the streets were very quiet in the capital and elsewhere as the country held its breath, with memories still fresh of post-election violence in 2007 that left 1,100 people dead.
The IEBC insists its electronic voting system -- seen as key to avoiding fraud -- had not been compromised, despite apparent attempts to do so.
Former US Secretary of State John Kerry, leading an observer team from the Carter Centre, expressed confidence in the integrity of the electronic system.
Some 400 international observers were present for Tuesday's vote.
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