Ever since the president of Kenya-Mwai Kibaki messed up an election that promised to advance Kenya's prospects of joining the world's stable democracies,intense plotical violence has raised the scepter of civil war in the country.President Kibaki comes from Kenya's largest and long dominant Kikuyu tribe while his closest challenger at the polls,Mr Raila Odinga,comes from the politically less important ethnic group of Luo.

By allegedly doctoring the results of the December 27th elections,President Kibaki has set the country of Kenya on fire.More than a thousand Kenyas are already dead.More than 250,000 have been driven from their homes and several other thousands have fled to neighbouring countries.Cars, public transport vehicles have been burnt,shops,business centres were destroyed and set ablaze.

At first,the Electoral Commission of Kenya{ECK} declared president Kibaki the winner with 4.5 million votes against the main opposition challenger's 4.3 million votes.However, Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement has said that its own agents had put the collated result at 3.7 million for Kibaki and 4.2 million for Odinga.The opposition party's claim was reinforced by the ruling party's clear defeat at the parliamentary polls.Odinga's opposition party won over 100 seats against the ruling party's 37.But Kibaki had himself hastily inaugurated and sworn-in on December 30th,sparking off riots in several parts of the country,especially is the Luo area where the opposition has its biggest support base.

In a sudden twist,the ECK chairman,acknowledge irregularities in the results of the elections,claiming that he had declared Kibaki winner because of "undue pressures" from the ruling party.Earlier, five members of the twenty-one-member ECK,all appointed by president Kibaki ,had disowned the result. The details of the rigging reflect the rampant African malaise of vote stealing.The chief electoral officer confessed that Kibaki had scored 48,293 votes at one station but the figure was cancelled and replaced withj 1000,390 without any endorsing signature.The ECK also said that result forms from some constituencies were altered and ballots cast of Maragwa,the central province,exceeded registered voters.Election observers,including the Euriopean Union {EU},complained of differences in some of the final results announced by Commissioners and those read out at constituencies.

Unfortunately,president Kibaki is turning himself to a full blown dictator

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