Veteran politician Mwai Kibaki and his opposition alliance have won a landslide victory in Kenyan elections, breaking the ruling party's 39-year grip on power, according to figures from an independent body monitoring the election.
With most of the ballots counted, the 71-year-old economist, who is leader of the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC), had 62.4 percent of the votes, the Institute for Education in Democracy said.
Ruling party candidate Uhuru Kenyatta conceded defeat yesterday in Kenya's presidential election and said he would take up the leadership of the opposition.
PHOTO: REUTERS
"I accept your choice and in particular now concede that Mr. Mwai Kibaki will be the third president of the republic of Kenya," Kenyatta, the candidate of the long-ruling Kenya African National Union (KANU), told a news conference in Nairobi.
"I accept the will of the people," he said.
The electoral commission was expected early yesterday afternoon to confirm that Kibaki, 71, and his NARC had won a large majority in the polls.
The Institute for Education in Democracy, an international donor-funded institute which is part of an umbrella of organizations monitoring the election, said 5,181,886 votes had been counted by 9:30am yesterday, and Kibaki had tallied 3,232,557 votes to Kenyatta's 1,530,713. The remaining votes were shared among three other minor candidates.
Turnout was 56 percent, the institute said. Some 10.5 million Kenyans had registered to vote for president, 210 members of parliament and 2,104 local councilors.
The opposition alliance had captured 121 of 185 parliamentary seats so far counted, compared to KANU's 47, the institute said. The other seats were won by smaller parties.
Kenya has 210 parliamentary constituencies and results from some remote areas, where voting was delayed because of heavy rain, had not been released.
The Electoral Commission had Kibaki leading by a 2-to-1 vote margin. Based on tallies from 135 constituencies, Kibaki received 2,573,395 votes, compared with Kenyatta's 1,223,086, the commission said. NARC had garnered 88 seats in parliament to KANU's 36.
Final official results were expected later yesterday.
Kenyatta was hand-picked by President Daniel arap Moi, who has ruled Kenya for 24 years and is constitutionally obliged to step down at the end of his current five year term.
``The Kenyan people have now spoken, and it is with great joy and humility that we accept their trust in president-elect Kibaki and NARC,'' Raila Odinga, a leading member of NARC, said Saturday as results trickled in.
Kibaki, who has been a leading opposition figure since multiparty politics were reintroduced in 1991, was Moi's vice president from 1978 to 1988.
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