Kenyan police clashed with opposition supporters where burning barricades and gangs of youths, who were seeking to challenge the credibility of Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta’s expected victory, prevented voting in some towns in an election rerun.
In the western city of Kisumu, stone-throwing youths heeding opposition leader Raila Odinga’s call for a voter boycott were met by live rounds, tear gas and water cannon three hours after polling stations were meant to have opened.
There were no immediate reports of casualties.
The election is being closely watched across east Africa, which relies on Kenya as a trade and logistics hub, and in the West, where Nairobi is regarded as a bulwark against Muslim militancy in Somalia, and civil conflict in South Sudan and Burundi.
“By and large the security situation in the country is OK. Polling stations have been opened in over 90 percent of the country and voting has commenced,” Kenyan Acting Cabinet Secretary for the Ministry of Internal Security and Coordination of National Government Fred Matiang’i told Citizen TV.
In the western town of Migori, several hundred young men milled about on a main road littered with rubble and burning barricades, broadcaster NTV’s footage showed.
The handful of polling officials who pitched up to work in Kisumu, the scene of major ethnic violence after a disputed election in 2007, cowered behind closed doors, unable to distribute voting materials.
Such problems, already acknowledged by judges and the election commission, are likely to trigger legal challenges to the run-off and could stir long-term instability in a country riven by deep ethnic divisions.
The rerun follows an August vote whose result — a Kenyatta victory — was annulled by the Kenyan Supreme Court due to procedural irregularities.
In Kisumu, constituency returning officer John Ngutai said no voting materials had been distributed and onlzy three of his 400 staff had turned up for work.
One nervous official described his work in the city as a “suicide mission.”
“We don’t have any options,” Ngutai told reporters as he and two presiding officers sorted thousands of ballot papers into piles, work that should have been completed the previous day.
Kisumu businessman Joshua Nyamori, 42, was one of the few voters brave enough to defy Odinga’s stay-away call, but said that intimidation had ended his desire to cast his ballot.
“I know it’s not a popular move,” he said. “Residents fear reprisal from political gangs organized by politicians. This is wrong.”
A decade after 1,200 people were killed over another disputed election, many Kenyans are ready for trouble, although on the eve of the vote Odinga backed off previous calls for protests and urged supporters to stay out of the way of police.
“We advise Kenyans who value democracy and justice to hold vigils and prayers away from polling stations, or just stay at home,” he said.
Odinga’s National Super Alliance coalition, which has been accused of harassing polling staff in the run-up to the vote, is likely to present a lack of open polling stations as proof the rerun, organized in less than 60 days, is bogus.
The head of the election commission last week said he could not guarantee a free and fair vote, citing interference from politicians and threats of violence against his colleagues.
One election commissioner has quit and fled the country.
Kenyatta has made it clear that he sees the vote as legitimate.
In central Nairobi, where support for the two protagonists is more mixed, early turnout was significantly down compared with the August poll.
Riot police were patrolling in Kibera and Mathare, two volatile Nairobi slums. Nearly 50 people have been killed by security forces since the August vote.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was