Violence Grips Kenya After Contested Vote

Death Toll Tops 130 As Kenyan Police Battle Protesters; President Kibaki Wins 2nd Term

(CBS/AP)  Kenya's newly re-elected president promised Monday to crack down on explosive riots that stretched from the shantytowns of the capital to the sweltering coast, killing at least 135 people after a vote that opponents say was rigged and observers say was suspicious at best.

The opposition retreated from a planned rally Monday, but called for a million people to march later this week, setting the stage for worsening turmoil in a regional economic powerhouse that has been East Africa's most stable democracy.

Fighting Monday brought much of the country to a standstill as residents stocked up on food and hunkered down in their homes for a third day. In the slums, where one-third of Nairobi's population lives, rioters waved machetes and shouted President Mwai "Kibaki must go!" Police beat them back with truncheons, tear gas, and live bullets fired in the air.

"We are ready to die and we're ready for serious killings," 24-year-old James Onyango, who lives in Nairobi's Kibera slum, told The Associated Press as the homes and shops around him burned.

The opposition candidate, Raila Odinga, called his march for Thursday on Uhuru Park, where protesters seeking multiparty democracy gathered in the early 1990s. Police had warned him not to rally Monday, and teams of riot police were deployed in Kibera and the Mathere slum, blocking residents from the city.

"We are calling for mass action," said Odinga, who had been leading Kibaki in early results and public opinion polls before his lead evaporated overnight. "We will march wearing black arm bands because we are mourning."

Odinga may have headed off more violence by calling off Monday's rally, but the situation was tense.

Much of the rioting in the slums has exposed Kenya's festering tribal resentments, with youths shouting vicious ethnic slurs. Odinga, is a Luo, a major tribe in Kenya that has long felt marginalized. Kibaki is Kikuyu, the country's largest tribe and one that has dominated business and politics since independence in 1963.

The slums are often divided along ethnic lines. The head of Kenya's Red Cross said many of the dead were killed in ethnic violence across the country.

Riots also erupted in opposition strongholds in western Kenya, the tourist-friendly coast and the Rift Valley. At least 135 people were killed since Saturday, according to police, morgues and witness accounts. Three police officers told The Associated Press independently that they had been ordered to shoot to kill to stop the rioters. A government spokesman denied such an order was given.

Kibaki, in a New Year's message to Kenyans, said his government will "deal decisively with those who breach the peace by intensifying security across the country."

Odinga, who came in second according to Sunday's official results, compared Kibaki to a military dictator who "seized power through the barrel of the gun."

The U.S. State Department expressed serious concerns Monday about what it called irregularities in the vote count. Tom Casey, deputy spokesman at the State Department, suggested the United States is not ready to recognize any winner.

"I am not offering congratulations to anybody because we have serious concerns about the vote count," he said. "What's clear is that there are some real problems here and that those need to be revolved in accordance with their constitution and in accordance with their legal system."

The European Union also questioned the outcome. "We have doubts about the accuracy of the presidential results," said Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, the chief European Union election monitor.

The violence, Odinga's resolve and the cool international response to his victory could put pressure on Kibaki, 76, to find a way to compromise with his opposition.

Kibaki was sworn in almost immediately after the results were announced Sunday. Within minutes, the slums exploded into fresh violence, tainting a vote that initially was praised as calm and orderly, a beacon of hope for democracy in Africa. If Kibaki had lost, he would have been the first sitting president ousted at the ballot box in Kenya.

Allegations of rigging were fueled by the fact that opposition took most of the parliamentary seats in Thursday's vote, but Kibaki still won the presidential election. A ban on live media broadcasts allowed wild rumors to flourish, spread by text message and shouted from neighbor to neighbor across barbed wire fences and winding alleys.

The bloodshed is a stunning turn of events in one of the most developed countries in Africa, with a booming tourism industry and one of the continent's highest growth rates.

Kibaki's supporters say he has turned Kenya's economy into an east African powerhouse, with an average growth rate of 5 percent. He won by a landslide in 2002, ending 24 years in power by the notoriously corrupt Daniel arap Moi. But Kibaki's anti-graft campaign has been seen as a failure, and the country still struggles with tribalism and poverty.

Odinga, a flamboyant 62-year-old with a son named Fidel Castro, cast himself as a champion of the poor. But his main constituency is Kibera, where some 700,000 people live in breathtaking poverty, and he has been accused of failing to do enough to help them in 15 years as a member of parliament.

Alex Busisa, a resident of Kibera who was during the riots, said it's always the poor who bear the brunt.

While politicians "could afford a plane to fly away ... it is the man on the ground who suffers, like me," Busisa said from a hospital bed after an operation for a gunshot wound to the stomach.

[runningralph]

Tribal warfare has a way of sliding quickly into genocide. Before modern weapons warriors would raid a village, rape, murder and pillage and head back home satisfied. Efforts to bring 40 tribes into one nation cause pent up animosity to explode similar to what happened in Rwanda among the Tutsis and Hutus. More violence is inevitable.

[runningralph]

nancy_naive,
You predicted civil war in the US before. But you never declared which side you would be on. Would you be for the Union or the Rebels?

[random_radar]

The problem with Democracy is that it consists of forming a majority to take advantage of a minority. Shifting alliances allow everyone to both oppress each other and be oppressed in turn.

Democracy is a failure because of selfishness. Rather than foster freedom and happiness, it allows us to rob and enslave each other through taxation and wealth transfer. Majority rule has caused the loss of individual freedom in favor of socialist regimentation.

The solution would be for everyone to have a change of heart and respect their neighbors'' rights and property. Instead of voting to control and rob their neighbors, everyone would vote to eliminate as much government power as possible and let everyone govern their own lives as much as possible.

But people don''t like to see their neighbors free and prosperous. Jealousy impels them to prohibit their fellow man from doing as he pleases and enjoying his property. So people vote in taxes and laws to stop each other from life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

[feelfree1]

Just think how much different things could be, had the U.S. public reacted this way, following the Bush regime election fraud efforts of 2000 and 2004...

[keithle1]

Africa is a barrel of laughs. One thing after another. It never ends. If Black Americans went to an African country for a month or two, they wouldn''t insist on calling themselves "African American." Apart from color, they share NOTHING in common.

[ajaxtheleast]

"Contested vote"? I can imagine. It wasn''t in the

above text, but at about 2PM I''m sure that NPR

reported that in some areas the voter turnout was

115 percent.

[brianbwb-2009]

Posted by Keithle1

Keithle1 is a barrel of laughs. I am an African American, descended from slaves brought to America. I call myself that because I do not accept, nor answer to the "N word" that the "Whites" placed on me and mine, and since I and my mother''s ancestors have been denied equal access to the benefits of US citizenship, (also my fathers'' but they were Cherokee, and that is a different story) It is our recognition that America has not yet begun to resemble its promise. It says that we are as American as any "White", (my father even more so,) but are still discriminated against, as if we weren''t full citizens. I choose to remember my roots, because it is true that a man who forgets where he came from, cannot know where he is going.

What we have in common with Africans is that people like yourself have a rather devolved habit of falsely generalizing about ethnicities, and trying to justify discrimination based on such idiotic notions as shared ethnic appearances. We also share the same goal, to shape our own destinies without people such as yourself exerting any influence whatsoever.