Moi attack on poll fuels Kenya chaos

The threadbare credibility of Kenya's elections was frayed paper- thin yesterday after President Daniel arap Moi's ruling party accused the electoral commission of conspiring to rig the polls against it.

The surprise claim by the Kenyan African National Union followed similar claims on Monday by irate opposition candidates. They had accused the government-appointed electoral commission of deliberately sowing chaos to help Mr Moi's party rig the vote.

Voting in parallel presidential, parliamentary and local elections began on Monday but had to be extended by an extra day yesterday as farcical scenes of incompetence and error prevented or delayed polling in many areas.

The chaos followed a bitter and at times bloody campaign, in which Kanu was widely accused of seeking to rig ballots and buy votes to extend its 34-year rule.

On Monday night, the leading opposition presidential candidate, Mwai Kibaki, said the irregularities were worse in anti-government areas and accused the electoral commission of conspiring with Kanu to win a fifth term for the increasingly unpopular Mr Moi, who has ruled Kenya for the last 19 years.

Another candidate, Charity Ngilu, alleged the elections were being rigged after she found thousands of ballot papers without stamps and hundreds of similar voter cards in the commission's offices in her constituency.

In the Rift Valley town of Eldoret, normally a Kanu stronghold, hundreds of opposition supporters took to the streets in protest at the handling of the election. There was also a tense stand-off in Kisii, Nyanza Province, where over 300 voters besieged a polling station which refused to allow them in yesterday morning.

Last night, three people were reported killed in election- related violence.

At a press conference yesterday, Kanu officials denounced the electoral commission, chaired by Mr Moi's appointee, Samuel Kivuitu, and comprising representatives of Kanu and the big opposition parties. The party chief executive, Geoffrey Kathurima, said Kanu and its candidates in many areas were being targeted "by elements of the electoral commission in concert with other interested parties".

Kanu officials would no longer "legitimise the fraud and corrupt machinations of the electoral commission" by monitoring the counting of votes which began yesterday.

But Kanu officials declined to endorse opposition calls for the elections to be abandoned and restaged. "There would not be any point in another election because the results have not come out," Mr Kathurima said.

"We don't expect to lose. Kanu is winning."