According to partial results aired on three Kenyan television stations, Raila Odinga, a flamboyant businessman campaigning as champion of the poor, has about 57 percent of the vote, compared to less than 40 percent for Mwai Kibaki, the incumbent who is known for boosting Kenya’s economy but favoring his own tribe.
Perhaps even more telling, though, is the rising casualty count among Mr. Kibaki’s inner circle. The foreign minister, the information minister, the vice-president and more than a dozen other politicians considered to be the nucleus of Kenya’s politico-economic establishment have lost their Parliament seats and therefore their influential jobs.
It seems that the withering attacks by Mr. Odinga and his party, the Orange Democratic Movement, have found their mark. Kenya’s 14 million voters — who turned out in record numbers on Thursday, with many people waiting hours in miles-long lines, were indeed desperate for change.
Mr. Odinga, 62, has promised to share the fruits of Kenya’s growing prosperity more equitably and end the pattern of tribal favoritism that has been at the core of Kenyan politics since independence in 1963.
“This vote is more anti-Kibaki than pro-opposition,” said Ludeki Cheweya, a political science professor at the University of Nairobi. “The president was seen as doing a bad job in terms of ethnic balance.”
So far the election period has been relatively peaceful, with a few scattered bursts of violence but no widespread turbulence. Foreign election observers, including the American ambassador to Kenya, have praised the process, saying it was free and fair, though at times a little chaotic.
However, Mr. Odinga’s party is now warning that unless the government speeds up the vote counting process, anxiety could sweep across the country and trigger serious violence.
“The political temperature is rising,” said Joseph Nyaga, a leader of the Orange Democratic Movement, which takes its name from the so-called orange revolution in the Ukraine a few years ago.
The movement said that the election commission was not operating independently and that the government was upset about losing power and pressuring election officials to delay the results.
“We live in Kenya,” Mr. Nyaga said. “We are Kenyans. We know what is happening.”
Elections officials denied there was any conspiracy to delay the results and said that record turnout and the contentiousness of the election was slowing the process down.
“We are doing our best,” said Mani Lemayian, a spokesman for the Kenyan election commission. “We are sharing the results as fast as we get them.”
He said that it might not be until Saturday that a winner was declared.
Contested elections are something new in Kenya. For the most of the country’s history, Kenya was ruled by a single party. Mr. Kibaki, a star economist, brought an end to that by winning the presidency in 2002 as leader of Kenya’s opposition.
But he failed to make good on his promises to stop corruption, especially among the Kikuyu elite, the tribe that has dominated business and politics in Kenya since independence.
Mr. Odinga says he will be different. For starters, he is a Luo, another big tribe in Kenya but one that many Kenyans feel has not gotten its fair due.
He is also an intriguing blend of
privilege and populism. His father was a
rich businessman and the country’s first
vice president but at the same time
espoused socialist values. When it came
time for college, young Raila was sent
to East Germany. He also named his son
Fidel Castro,
in honor of Cuba’s president.